Plantation firms told to return disputed land.

JAKARTA (JP): President Abdurrahman Wahid, popularly known as Gus Dur, has instructed state owned plantation companies to return some 40 percent of land taken by force or bought at unfair prices from local people in the past. Gus Dur said in a statement distributed following a late Monday cabinet meeting on the economy, that the plantation firms could return the land physically or provide shares to the affected people.

According to the statement, the President stressed that this policy only applies to land which involves legal problems.

The statement said that the new government was aware that some of the land owned by state-owned companies or private …