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Date: Wed, 25 Oct 2000 22:59:25 EDT
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Subject: [AfricaMatters] Summit asked to wash hands of bloody diamonds
Summit asked to wash hands of bloody diamonds
October 25 2000 at 07:23PM
London - Trade in "blood diamonds" - gems whose illicit sales help bankroll
some of Africa's most brutal civil wars - can be stemmed, but only through
concerted international effort, a top British official told a landmark
gathering on Wednesday.
The two-day conference, which opened on Wednesday in London, marked the most
wide-ranging assembly so far in the fight against so-called conflict
diamonds, the British organisers said.
Attending were delegates from 37 nations, including the world's largest
producers and refiners of diamonds, plus the European Union and the
industry's World Diamond Council.
Before heading into a series of closed-door talks participants heard an
impassioned plea from the foreign office minister, Peter Hain, to eliminate
the "scourge" of blood diamonds, a driving force behind insurgencies
including the vicious nine-year civil war in Sierra Leone.
'Nothing could be easier than carrying a diamond across a border'
Rebels in the West African nation have killed tens of thousands of civilians
and intentionally maimed many others.
"No one who has visited a refugee camp in Sierra Leone, as I did ... can
doubt the value and urgency of the task before us today," Hain told the
group. "No one who met women who had seen rebels lop off the arms and legs of
their children could fail to be moved. And no one could see these children
and not be angered."
The gathering was meant to foster a free exchange of views in advance of next
month's UN General Assembly debate on conflict diamonds.
Participants did not plan to issue a communique or formally vote on any new
guidelines, the organisers said.
In his opening remarks Hain acknowledged the enormous logistical difficulties
in preventing diamonds from being smuggled out of conflict zones and traded
for weapons.
'Cutting out this cancer from the world diamond trade is a real challenge'
"Nothing could be easier than carrying a diamond across a border," he said.
"Nothing could be harder than detecting the origin of a diamond once it has
been mixed with other diamonds from different mines."
To help stifle the illicit trade the diamond industry has called for
diamond-importing nations to prohibit rough diamonds unless they have gone
through a global certification process.
Existing controls require certificates of origin to state where a diamond was
last exported, but not where it was mined.
Measures adopted by the industry in July are meant to track diamonds from the
mine to the jewelry store, with severe penalties for dealers who break the
rules.
With the backing of governments involved a global certification process could
be in place by Christmas, Hain said.
In July the Security Council banned the purchase of Sierra Leone diamonds
without government certification, and in August, the UN panel monitoring
sanctions against Sierra Leone approved a new government plan to certify
diamonds, paving the way for the lifting of an export ban earlier this month.
Conflict diamonds represent only a fraction of world production but trade in
them hurts the entire industry, Hain said.
"Cutting out this cancer from the world diamond trade is a real challenge,"
he said. "We must ensure that the solution does not jeopardise the tens of
thousands of jobs worldwide which depend on the legitimate diamond trade." -
Sapa-AP
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