Liberia welcomes diamond embargo

Liberian Information Minister Joe Mulbah has welcomed the 18-month ban imposed by the UN Security Council on the trade in uncertified rough diamonds from Sierra Leone. He said he thought the ban would be helpful as “there have been lies told against Liberia and with this embargo now the world will see where the diamonds are coming from,” ‘The Inquirer’ newspaper in Monrovia reported on Friday. Liberia has been accused of exporting far more diamonds than it can produce and acting as a conduit for smuggled diamonds from Sierra Leone. According to diamond industry sources, diamonds labelled as Liberian include Sierra Leonean conflict diamonds, Russian diamonds aiming to evade European tariffs and precious stones from South America, Sierra Leone Web reported on Thursday. The Minister of Mineral Resources in Sierra Leone, Mohammed Swarry Deen, said that the diamond embargo on ‘conflict stones’ was a welcome development, news organisations reported on Thursday. He told AFP that the government already had a draft of the certificate of origin necessary for diamonds from Sierra Leone to be accepted in any of the diamond trading centres abroad. Meanwhile in Europe, the British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook and his Belgian counterpart welcomed the adoption by the Security Council of the UK proposed resolution.