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UN to Lift Liberia's Diamond Sanctions
Independent Online - South Africa
April 19, 2007The United Nations Security Council is likely to lift its embargo on Liberia's diamond exports as soon as the west African nation has made progress in certifying the origin of its rough diamonds, diplomats said on Wednesday. "The United States has just introduced a resolution today and the experts will look at it today and we expect this resolution to be passed as soon as possible," South Africa's UN envoy Dumisani Kumalo told reporters. "I think there's a prevailing view that what we want to do is encourage the government in Liberia in all the steps that it's taking positively, provided the Kimberley process is actually being applied now rigorously, that we should actually lift the remaining sanctions," said his British counterpart and current council president, Emyr Jones Parry.
The UN-backed Kimberley process, which groups 43 countries and international organisations, was set up in May 2000 to prevent illegally exported "conflict diamonds" being used to buy arms. Members of the group have agreed to a certificate system designed to identify the origin of diamonds and guarantee that they are legally exported.
The US draft would lift the diamond embargo and urge "the Kimberley Process to report in 90 days to the council on Liberia's application to the Kimberly Process". Jones Parry said he expected the US draft to be adopted by the 15-member council before the end of the month.
Meanwhile, Liberia's main diamond union accused a US mining company on Wednesday of violating the UN ban. "The American Mining Associates (AMA) is engaged in intensive mining of diamonds in the Kumgbor area in Gbarpolu county," said Shedrick Wisner, secretary general of the Gold and Diamond Workers Union of Liberia. Wisner told a press conference that government officials were "secretly giving out diamond licenses to miners in the field". Liberia-based AMA officials could not be reached for comment, but Eugene Shannon, Liberia's mines and energy minister, denied the allegations. "There is no mining going on in Gbarpolu or anywhere in Liberia," Shannon told AFP, adding the government had asked for UN help to control illicit mining from people crossing its border regions.
Under Kimberley, rough diamonds are sealed in tamper-resistant containers and required to have forgery-resistant, conflict-free certificates with unique serial numbers each time they cross an international border. In December, the Security Council renewed sanctions against Liberia barring trade in diamonds and arms as well as targeting individual Liberians. While the council then welcomed progress by the Liberian government since January 2006 to reconstruct the war-torn country and co-operate with the international effort to monitor the diamond trade, it said the situation still posed a threat to peace and security in the region.
Trafficking in illegal diamonds is considered one of the root causes of the back-to-back civil wars in Liberia since 1989 as well as of the 10-year brutal conflict in neighbouring Sierra Leone that ended in 2001.
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