By Wendell Roelf
CAPE TOWN Feb 8 (Reuters) – A review of a global
scheme to monitor blood diamonds could bring changes to the
Kimberley Process, under fire over its damaging loopholes, but
the United States on Tuesday dampened hopes of a swift and
comprehensive overhaul.
Speaking on the sidelines of a major industry gathering in
South Africa, Gillian Milovanovic, the U.S. diplomat appointed
last month to chair the process for 2012, said a committee led
by Botswana was carrying out the review, but would not present
results until November.
“The greatest challenge is to get agreement on what changes
have taken place and what kind of an evolution this suggests for
the organization,” Milovanovic said, in one of her first public
appearances since the United States took the rotating
chairmanship this year.
“It is important that the process continues to be relevant
and I think that requires a certain amount of revision and
reform,” she told reporters.
But she dashed some campaigners’ hopes that the U.S. arrival
as chair of the process at the start of 2012, a year short of
its 10-year anniversary, would mark rapid change.
“The organization, it is no secret, had two years of
extremely painful discussions and I think that now everyone is
feeling a sense that its time to refocus on the process itself
and on more than one country,” she said.
Milovanovic said the process, under the U.S. presidency,
would not review the decision to allow Zimbabwean diamonds from
Marange, one of the biggest diamond finds in decades, onto world
markets.
The Kimberley Process was set up in January 2003, aimed at
cutting off “blood diamond” financing for rebel groups fighting
a U.N.-recognised government.
Continued…
