Illegal construction halted at U.N.-Protected National Park

Originallly posted at:http://asia.news.yahoo.com/050127/kyodo/d87scq500.html

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(Kyodo) _ Central government investigators have stopped illegal construction of Communist Party leaders＇ private villas in Lushan Forest Park, a U.N.-endorsed World Heritage site and nationally famous tourist attraction, local media reported Thursday.
The Central Discipline and Inspection Commission ordered all primary construction and remodeling stopped on villas in three tracts in the Lianhuadong scenic area of Lushan Forest Park, the Beijing News reported, citing the official Xinhua News Agency.
One tract is in the World Geology Park area of Lushan.
A restaurant and a hotel have also shut down in the park, which is located in the southern province of Jiangxi.
Communist Party cadres from an undisclosed location were building the villas illegally, which caught the "widespread" attention of the central government and common people, the Beijing News reported.
The commission sent a team to Lushan in December, the paper said. The government and party officials from surrounding Jiangxi Province also probed the villa issue.
"According to the relevant parties, the evidence collection investigation has achieved a breakthrough," the paper said.
The report did not say how much construction was stopped or which cadres were due to occupy the villas.
Lushan Forest Park is a 400-square-kilometer park of towering peaks, old-growth forests and temples to Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism. Mao-era revolutionaries also used the park for strategy retreats. Hotels and restaurants operate in the most popular parts of the park.
In 1996, the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization listed Lushan as a World Heritage site for "cultural landscape of outstanding aesthetic value and its powerful associations with Chinese spiritual and cultural life."
Park officials must contact UNESCO before building anything in park areas that contribute to its heritage status, a UNESCO spokeswoman said.
One of the villa construction tracts includes 100 cultural sites, the Beijing News reported. A park staff member declined to comment on the villa construction.
News of the construction halt is probably an effort to prove that the government is supervising itself -- the subject of last year＇s annual party plenum in Beijing -- said political writer Zhang Zuhua.
"This kind of news can be listed as ＇anticorruption＇ or ＇government management＇," Zhang said. "It＇s not a sensitive topic. This kind of news is always coming to light."