The district leaders "all come from the regencies in Kalimantan. Legal proceedings against them are still ongoing," Forestry Minister Malam Sambat Kaban was quoted as saying in the English-language Jakarta Post.

Kalimantan is the Indonesian part of the jungle-clad island of Borneo.

Kaban mentioned no names but the prosecutions would be the first clear legal moves taken against senior local officials under the current government of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who came to power in October 2004.

Yudhoyono declared war against illegal logging in March.

The minister said combating illegal logging was an uphill battle because it involved corrupt officials in at least 16 state institutions, including the police, military, the customs and excise office and his own ministry.

"Many officials are involved in the crime and I admit that the ministry of forestry cannot overcome the complexity of the illegal logging problem alone," Kaban reportedly said.

Indonesian police said separately Saturday they had arrested five state forestry officials and two other men for alleged involvement in the illegal felling of forests on Borneo.

Kaban said that almost half of the country's some 120 million hectaresmillion acres) of natural forest has been logged out over the past 30 years.

Officials have said that illegal logging was costing the country more than three billion dollars in lost revenue annually.

About 74 other forestry ministry officials have been detained since January for backing illegal logging operations in Indonesia -- ranked as one of the world's most graft-prone countries by watchdog Transparency International.

Rapid deforestation has had devastating environmental consequences for both Indonesia and the Southeast Asian region, causing floods and landslides and shrouding nearby countries with haze from illegal fires set to clear land.

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