THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
(Okinawa, Japan)
________________________________________________________________________
For Immediate Release July 21, 2000
Illicit Diamonds and Conflicts
The United States has spearheaded a number of initiatives to curb the
trade in illicit diamonds that fuels many African conflicts and
humanitarian crises -- particularly in Sierra Leone, Angola and the
Democratic Republic of Congo.
During the last year, the United States and other members of the G-8
have made headway in engaging the diamond industry, diamond-producing
states and other members of the international community to address this
problem.
The Clinton-Gore Administration has been supportive of a variety of
measures to tighten global marketing practices and to build capacity to
manage the diamond sector in diamond-producing states. At the same
time, the U.S. has worked hard to ensure that efforts to address
conflict diamonds not harm the interests of legitimate diamond-producing
states.
In particular:
-- The Clinton-Gore Administration has actively supported the efforts
of the UN Experts Panel on UNITA sanctions. The panel seeks to
strengthen the UN Security Council sanctions on diamonds from UNITA-held
areas of Angola and recent Security Council actions on conflict diamonds
in Sierra Leone; -- The United State joined other members of the U.N.
Security Council in passing resolution 1306 designed to prohibit trade
in diamonds from Sierra Leone without a valid government certificate.
-- The U.S. and the U.K. met with diamond authorities in Gaborone,
Botswana, reinforcing support for the twin goals of defining pragmatic
measures while taking special care to do no harm to the legitimate
diamond trade;
-- In October 1999, the State Department sponsored an
international conference in Washington focusing on the economies of war
in Angola, Congo and Sierra Leone and initiated a direct dialogue with
diamond officials from Botswana and Angola;
-- In March, 2000, the State Department sponsored a planning
exercise with the Government of Sierra Leone and diamond industry
leaders to develop a management plan for the country's diamond
resources;
-- In May 2000, at a conference on illicit diamonds in
Kimberly, South Africa, African diamond producers, the United States,
the United Kingdom, Belgium and De Beers, among others, reached
agreement in principle on:
--The importance of establishing a global certification
scheme for diamonds;
-- The need for a formal code of conduct to govern the
practices of the industry, of diamond-producing states and of
marketing centers;
-- The creation of an independent monitoring agency to
supervise the implementation of the certification scheme and
the code of conduct;
-- The establishment of a working group to make
recommendations on specific mechanisms for implementing these
agreements.
-- In February 2000, De Beers, the international diamond
marketing corporation and the world's largest diamond mining operation,
announced that it would stop purchasing diamonds from conflict zones in
Africa -- an important step toward limiting the market for illicit
diamonds in Europe, Japan and the United States.
-- As a result of the original U.S.-U.K. initiative, the World
Diamond Congress on July 19 responded with a widely reported effort to
establish a "chain of warranties" to curb and end the trade in illicit
diamonds.
The U.S. and the U.K. have led the work of the group of experts to
recommend a series of steps on illicit diamonds endorsed by the G-8
Foreign Ministers at Miyazaki on June 13 and called for the issue of
conflict diamonds to be included on the agenda for the G-8 meeting in
Okinawa as part of an initiative on conflict prevention.
In Okinawa, the G-8 expressed special concern that the proceeds from the
illicit trade in diamonds have contributed to aggravating armed conflict
and humanitarian crises, particularly in Africa. The G-8 therefore
called for an international conference to consider practical approaches
to breaking the link between the illicit trade in diamonds and armed
conflict, including consideration of an international agreement on
certification for rough diamonds.
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