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KUALA LUMPUR (AFP) - Malaysia and Indonesia said Friday they will meet European lawmakers to debunk accusations oil palm plantations are environmentally destructive claims they said are hurting the sector.

The two neighbours are the world's leading producers of crude palm oil.

"With this sort of disinformation ... we find that it is incumbent on the industry and the government to provide the right information," Malaysian Plantations Minister Peter Chin said.

At a joint press conference, Indonesian Agriculture Minister Anton Apriyantono and Chin said they would counter such "misleading allegations."

Malaysia and Indonesia last July announced a campaign to fight environmentalist claims that oil palm plantations destroy vast swathes of tropical forest, pushing endangered animals like the orangutan to extinction.

Malaysia will hold a seminar in Brussels on June 6 and Indonesia has a similar event planned for July in London targeting lawmakers and activists to address the claims, the ministers said.

Chin said the claims were damaging demand for crude palm oil in Europe, which is looking to bio-fuels to help the environment.
"I would say there is some impact on (the) consumption pattern in Europe," he said.

The chief executive of the Malaysian Palm Oil Council, Yusof Basiron, said pressure from activists last year discouraged the Netherlands from issuing subsidies for the use of palm oil.

"The action taken by the Dutch government to not give subsidies for the use of palm oil in power generation did result in at least half a million tonnes of such oil not being used," said Yusof.

"Half a million tonnes is a lot of market opportunity lost because of such moves," he told reporters.

Apriyantono said the two countries were committed to creating sustainable oil palm plantations.

The clearing of forests is mainly for "legal and illegal logging ... so it is not true that orangutan have been diminished because of the oil palm plantations," he said.

Malaysia and Indonesia have nascent palm oil-based bio-diesel industries.

The ministers said they also agreed to hold steady on allocating six million tonnes of palm oil annually each for bio-diesel production.