TIMBER production in Congo is expected to reach 850_,000 tons this year as compared with 650_000 tonnes in 2000 because peace has returned after years of civil war, a top forestry official said on Wednesday. The forecast of a 200_000 ton rise in production is based on resumed logging in the central Niari and Lekoumou regions, where fighting between government troops and rebel militias had halted work for more than two years. Timber production in these areas is expected to reach 400_000 ton in 2001, while it was 200_000 tonnes before the conflict, the director-general of the state forest economy office, Lambert Imbalo, told journalists. The increase is also due to considerable investment in the sector by a Malaysian company, Taman, which has built a road from the central regions to the Atlantic port of Pointe-Noire, 500km distant.