By Wahyudi Soeriaatmadja, Indonesia Correspondent

JAKARTA: The Indonesian government has defended the country's drive to expand oil palm cultivation, resisting demands by environmentalists who say it is destroying the country's natural forests and peatlands.

Agriculture Minister Anton Apriyantono has said that Indonesia would still retain 60 per cent of its forests, in addition to the 23 million ha already marked out as protected forest.

Besides, he told an annual meeting on sustainable palm oil in Bali earlier this week, any moratorium on deforestation, as environmental group Greenpeace recently demanded, was beyond the government's control.

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