The giant Hong Kong Chinese timber company Vicwood arrived quietly in the CAR in 2000 by buying up the local subsidiary of the French group Thanry, and operates as well in neighbouring Cameroon.

Owned by the wealthy entrepreneur Vicwood K.T. Chong, the firm two years later obtained the country's largest timber export license during a lavish ceremony attended by then president Ange-Felix Patasse.

When Patasse was ousted in a coup in 2003, which eventually led to elections won by his President Francois Bozize, the soldier who topped him and launched an anti-corruption drive, Vicwood began to see its power eroded.

Today, however, the natural wood and plywood firm, which has crossed swords with the environmental group Greenpeace over its alleged devastation of central African forests and opening the way for bushmeat poachers, is a heavyweight.

With its Vica subsidiary and local firms it has bought, it ranks alongside the Lebanese company Sefca as one of the two biggest industrial loggers in the CAR. The arrival of the Malaysian group WTK has swung the export market towards Asia.

"Some companies function by confrontation with the indigenous people," said Francois Zonzamba, an activist in the Green Movement of Central Africa, without giving any names. "It is regrettable because they destroy the forest and are opposed to the wishes of the inhabitants."

"The most obvious interest for Central Africa is to diversify its export markets," comments a European specialist. "The flow of the logs in the direction of the Chinese market was stepped up in 2002 and should still increase with the introduction of new licenses."

However this was accompanied by a certain number of environmental lapses, according to local green non-governmental organisations, and Chinese loggers are under pressure to clean up their act.

Allan Thornton, president of the Longon and Washington-based non-profit Environmental Investigation Agency, told the US House of Representatives last year that "China's role in Africa's illegal logging industry is predatory in nature and poses a threat to forests, the communities that rely on them and weak governments susceptible to corruption."

To curb these practices, Bangui authorities put in place an action plan to ensure forestry laws are respected.

"Our objective is to see the effective application of the forest code," explained a government official. Under a project financed by CAF and the French government, the two major players in the logging sector -- Vicwood and Sefca -- have signed a provisional convention for sustainable management of forests.

"The Vicwood group, which does not try to hide the fact that it is seeking other areas to exploit, more or less respected these conventions," said the European specialists.

"We are pleased with this progress," said Maxime Dalalou, of the Central African Organization for the Defense of Nature, a local NGO. "But we want it extended to other companies, because the majority continue not to comply with the rules."

Meantime the European Union (EU) has pledged 38 million euros (46 million dollars) for forest and ecosystem conservation in Central Africa.

The funds are designated for the Programme for Conservation and Rational Utilization of Forest Ecosystems in Central Africa, known as ECOFAC, which helps preserve some 2.3 million square kilometers (890,000 square miles) of African tropical forest in the Congo basin.

ECOFAC, begun in 1992 after the Rio environmental summit, attempts to conserve forests in the Congo basin, considered the planet's second largest green lung after the Amazon. ECOFAC covers forests in six countries: Cameroon, Central African Republic, Congo, Gabon, Equatorial Guinea and the archipelago of Sao Tome and Principe. With peace there, it will be extended to the Democratic Republic of Congo, a move that would almost double its territory.

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