By DENIS D. GRAY,
Associated Press Writer AP - Thursday, March 20

BANGKOK, Thailand - Vietnam is siphoning off huge quantities of
illegally logged timber from neighboring Laos and turning it into
furniture for consumers in the United States and Europe, an
environmental group said Wednesday.

"Vietnam's booming economy and demand for cheap furniture in the West
is driving rapid deforestation (in Laos)," Julian Newman of the Britain-
based Environmental Investigation Agency said at a press conference.

The group showed a video of fleets of trucks laden with logs crossing
the border into Vietnam from Laos, which has banned the export of logs
and sawn timber.

Every year, an estimated 500,000 cubic meters (654,000 cubic yards) of
logs are smuggled across the frontier after false documents are
produced and bribes paid, the group said.

The video included Vietnamese businessmen admitting logs at their
factories came from Laos in violation of the country's laws and were
processed into furniture for export.

A huge pile of logs from Laos were shown in the Vietnamese port of
Vinh, ready for sale.

Thai businesses, Newman said, were also buying illegally cut timber
from Laos, which harbors some of the last great forests of mainland
Southeast Asia.

"The cost of such unfettered greed is borne by poor rural communities
in Laos who are dependent on the forests for their traditional
livelihoods," Newman said.

Vietnamese and Thai officials were not immediately available for
comment. The illegal trafficking of timber from Laos has been well
documented and the governments of both countries have in the past
acknowledged the existence of such a trade.

"The ultimate responsibility for his dire state of affairs rests with
the consumer markets which import wood products made from stolen
timber," Newman said.

Faith Doherty, another EIA staffer, said draft laws now before the
U.S. Congress would curb such imports. She said the European Union was
taking steps to certify furniture and other forest products as having
come from legally procured timber.

An EIA report also released Wednesday noted that Vietnam since the
1990s has taken steps to conserve its own forests while at the same
time expanding its wooden furniture production, much of it with illegal
timber.

Furniture exports from Vietnam totaled US$2.4 billion (?1.5 billion)
last year, a tenfold increase since 2000. According to the Vietnamese
government, 39 percent of the exports in 2006 went to the United
States, 14 percent to Japan, 7 percent to the United Kingdom and 4
percent each to France and Germany.

"The plundering of Laos' forests involves high-level corruption and
bribery and it is not just Vietnam, which is exploiting its neighbor.
Thai and Singapore traders are also cashing in," the report said.

Posing as investors, EIA staffers met one Thai businessman who bragged
of paying bribes to senior Lao military officials to secure timber
potentially worth US$500 million (?318 million).