25/09/05 KUALA LUMPUR (AFP) - Demand for palm oil, which is widely used inprocessed foods, is driving the orangutan towards extinction by speedingthe destruction of their forest habitat, Friends of the Earth said.

The environmental campaigners said Asia's only great ape could be wipedout within 12 years unless there was urgent intervention in the palm oiltrade, which it said was also linked with human rights abuses.

"Almost 90 percent of the orangutan's habitat in Indonesia and Malaysiahas now been destroyed. Some experts estimate that 5,000 orangutan perishas a result every year," it said in a statement from London.

In a report it dubbed the "Oil for Ape Scandal," the group said wildlifecentres in Indonesia were over-run with orphaned baby orangutans that hadbeen rescued from forests being cleared to make way for new plantations.

"Oil-palm plantations have now become the primary cause of the orangutans'decline, wiping out its rainforest home in Borneo and Sumatra," it said.

Friends of the Earth said that palm oil is found in one in 10 products onsupermarket shelves, including bread, crisps and cereals as well aslipstick and soap, and that many manufacturers did not know where theiroil was coming from.

Palm oil plantations have also been blamed for the annual haze crisiswhich hit Malaysia and Thailand last month, as clouds of smoke and dustfrom "slash and burn" operations drifted over from Indonesia's Sumatraisland.

"Research by Friends of the Earth shows that the forest fires whichravaged the island of Sumatra in August, and continue to burn today, weremostly set by palm oil companies clearing land to set up theirplantations," it said.

"It is estimated that one third of the orangutan population on Borneo waskilled by the forest fires of 1998," it said, referring to the disastroushaze crisis that year which crippled business and tourism in parts ofSoutheast Asia.

Global conservation group WWF has also sounded the alarm over plans tocreate a huge new oil palm plantation in Indonesian Borneo, saying itwould have a devastating impact on the wildlife and indigenous peoples,

The proposed plantation, funded by China, is expected to cover 1.8 millionhectares along the mountainous border with Malaysian Sarawak, equivalentto about half the size of the Netherlands, WWF said in August.

However, WWF in Malaysia has downplayed fears that orangutans could beextinct within the next few decades due to habitat destruction, describingthose claims last year as "rather alarmist and not realistic".

The red-haired apes, close kin to humans, are found only on Borneo, whichis shared by Malaysia, Indonesia and Brunei, and on the neighbouringIndonesian island of Sumatra.

Their numbers have dwindled to less than 60,000 from a population thatonce spanned Southeast Asia.

As well as forest clearing, they are threatened by commercial logging,hunting and poaching for the bush meat and pet trades and forest fires