Interlaken Meeting To Seal Kimberley Process Agreement

Representatives from 45 countries that produce, sell and trade in diamonds are meeting at Interlaken, Switzerland, to approve the Kimberley Process. The meeting, taking place yesterday and today, is the culmination of two years of debates and discussions involving countries, diamond businesses, NGO’s and the UN.

By the end of the day today, a formal approval of the process by the countries is expected, and on January 1, 2003, implementation will begin. The new rules are intended to assure that diamonds will be certified as ‘clean’.

The debate over ‘Conflict Diamonds’ will not end there as NGO’s warned that the system is flawed. On Friday they said that written warranties offered by diamond manufacturers and traders to complement the governments' efforts was critically unsound because it could not be audited.

A main role in advancing the process was taken up by the US. The majority of the world’s diamonds are imported into the country, but last year’s terrorist attacks in New York, gave an additional push when reports claimed that al-Qaida laundered money through diamonds mined illegally in Sierra Leone.

The ‘Clean Diamond Act’ and the ‘Clean Diamond Trade Act’, legislations passed by the Senate and Congress respectively, were first steps taken even before the attacks. The legislation is now followed by the appointment of James Bindenagel as the special negotiator for conflict diamonds.