"The government will launch short- and long-term environmental rehabilitation and reforestation programs across the country," Forestry Minister Muhammad Prakosa said.

The minister, quoted by the state news agency Antara, said the programme would cover 300,000 hectares (741,000 acres) of forests and 15 river basin areas. No start date was given.

Prakosa said the government would order a halt to all logging in Gunung (Mount) Leuser National Park in North Sumatra and illegal loggers would be sternly dealt with.

A team would visit the park and review a plan to build a road through it.

The confirmed death toll from the flood which hit the resort town of Bahorok, on the edge of the park, stood at 109 as of Thursday afternoon and 113 people are still missing and feared dead, a disaster relief agency official said.

Hopes of finding the missing alive are very slim, officials have said.

Among those killed in Sunday night's flood were five foreigners. About 450 homes or other structures were destroyed along with 35 resort cottages and eight bridges.

Vice President Hamzah Haz and several ministers and officials have said rampant illegal logging in the national park contributed to the disaster at Bahorok, 96 kilometres (60 miles) northwest of Medan.

Environment minister Nabiel Makarim on Wednesday branded illegal loggers as terrorists. "The consequences caused by the destruction of the environment like floods and landslides are just as dangerous as the consequences of a bomb," he said.

Makarim criticised the army and police for their role in the practice, which is common across much of the huge archipelago.

A report last year by the World Resources Institute, Global Forest Watch, and Forest Watch Indonesia Reports said Indonesia was losing nearly two million hectares of forest annually -- an area half the size of Switzerland.

TERRA.WIRE