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The Namibian/Misa, January 1998.
OFFSHORE diamond pro-duction in Namibia is set to increase by up to 20 per cent after one of the major players in the industry, the Namibian Minerals Corporation (Namco) started operations off Luderitz Bay this week.
Namco's corporate commun-ications manager, Megan Williams told The Namibian that the company estimated it would recover 150 000 carats of diamonds valued at about N$135 million in the first year of production
Ewen MacAskill and
David Pallister
Wednesday December 20, 2000
The Guardian
African leaders trading gems for arms must be punished, says UN panel
The
United Nations is finally to mount an onslaught on the trade in "blood"
diamonds from Africa, according to a report into the links between gems and arms
leaked to the Guardian.
The uncompromising report recommends a series of
punitive measures against west African countries linked to the civil war in Sierra
Leone.
The 58-page report also points a finger of blame at Switzerland, a transit point for almost half the rough diamonds entering Britain. Switzerland is listed as "country of origin", even though it produces no diamonds of its own.
The UN panel recommends that a first-ever international embargo on diamonds should be applied to Sierra Leone's neighbours, Liberia and Gambia.
The panel singles out Charles Taylor, the president of Liberia, saying he "is actively involved in fuelling the violence in Sierra Leone, and many businessmen close to his inner circle operate on an international scale, sourcing their weaponry mainly in eastern Europe".
It adds: "In short, Liberia is actively breaking [UN] security council embargoes regarding weapons imports into its own territory and into Sierra Leone. It is being actively assisted by Burkina Faso. It is being tacitly assisted by all the countries allowing weapons to pass through or over their territory without question, and by those countries that provide a base for the aircraft used in such operations."
Additional measures against Mr Taylor include the immediate grounding of all Liberian-registered flights and a travel ban on him and his inner circle.
Widening the net, the panel proposes giving Guinea and the Ivory Coast six months to introduce proper certification schemes proving their diamonds are clean. If they do not, they too will face an international diamond embargo.
The panel also wants increased scrutiny of diamond exports from Uganda, the Central African Republic, Ghana, Namibia, Congo-Brazzaville, Mali, Zambia and Burkina Faso.
The report is due to be published in New York tomorrow after being scrutinised in the UN security council, which will meet again next month to discuss implementation.
The diamonds and arms trade have long been intertwined in Africa. In March, Robert Fowler, the Canadian ambassador to the UN, carried out an initial investigation into diamond smuggling by the Angolan rebel movement Unita, which led to the naming of individual businessmen involved in illicit trade.
The diamond industry, afraid of consumer reaction against "blood" diamonds, has promised tougher scrutiny but the UN report concludes that this is inadequate.
The report estimates that the rebel movement in Sierra Leone, the Revolutionary United Front, which has gained notoriety for chopping off the arms and legs of victims, deals each year in diamonds worth between £25m and £125m, more than enough to sustain its forces.
Ranged against it is the Sierra Leone army supported by a UN force and a British contingent. The bulk of the RUF diamonds leaves Sierra Leone through Liberia, the report said. "Such trade cannot be conducted without the permission and involvement of Liberian government officials at the highest levels."
The report castigated the failure of the industry world-wide to come up with a proper method for determining the origin of diamonds and for tracking their movement. The report found that in 1999 Britain imported £107m in rough diamonds.
"Of this, Switzerland was recorded as the 'country of origin' for 41% or £44.2m. Switzerland, as a non-producer of diamonds, could only have been the country of provenance, importing the diamonds from another country," it said.
It added: "Those diamonds bound for the UK thus become 'Swiss' simply by virtue of having passed through a Freilager [free trade area]." The country of origin is lost.
The panel welcomed the scheme started this year in government-held areas of Sierra Leone which certified that diamonds were mined in legitimate areas. But the panel concluded that the scheme has to be extended worldwide.
It has been estimated that Namibia's total diamond production could increase by more than 500 000 carats per annum primarily due to offshore production.
An initial capital of N$250 million has been injected into Namco's Namibian operation.
The company has been granted a 15 year mining licence for the Koichab area off its Luderitz Bay grant.
Williams said Namco's mining tool, a 100 tonne seabed crawler code-named NAMSSOL, had arrived at Luderitz on Wednesday last week.
The crawler has been described by its designers as one of the most sophisticated mining systems ever to work off the west coast of Africa.
The NAMSSOL, which comprises an electrically driven centrifugal power pump which powers the suction boom, was built in Aberdeen, Scotland.
It has the ability to mine sediment which is up to five metres thick and in water up to 150 metres deep with a 90 per cent recovery rate of all seabed material.
Williams said the company expected to announce its first diamond results at the end of February.
During the initial operation stage, Namco will employ a total of 116 people of which 30 would be Namibians under training.
Williams said eventually the non-Namibians employed to train Namibians would be relieved of their duties to make way for locals.
In the meantime, Namco said it would continue its research and development programme with emphasis on developing technology for the company's South African concessions which have a different geological terrain.
A 92 metre long mining vessel named 'Kovambo' after the country's first lady has been leased by Namco and has been fitted with a 50 tonnes per hour processing plant.
About N$68 million was invested in rehabilitating the vessel for its Namibian operations.
The Namibian
The Republic of Namibia
Namco enters the Namibian diamond mining industry at a time when the Mineworkers
Union of Namibia (MUN) is up in arms over the way in which multi-nationals already
in the country are operating.
MUN General Secretary Peter Naholo said the union was concerned because billions of dollars were going out of the country as a result of the "stealing" of diamonds from the deep seas.
He also slammed the Government and De Beers - joint partners in the Namdeb mining company - for continuing to promote economic injustice.
Speaking at a press conference yesterday, Naholo said there was no proper monitoring of the quality and quantity of the diamonds being mined by Namdeb.
"The Government is sleeping on duty for years now...ever since they (Government) took control, De Beers had been stealing the diamonds. They manipulate everything because the Government is in the dark," Naholo said.
The Namibian Government is a joint shareholder in Namdeb together with De Beers. Both companies hold a 50 per cent share holding.
Naholo claimed the problem would have been addressed properly if the Government had consulted his union before entering into a joint venture with De Beers.
"Our members know what is going on there because they have been there for years. Now the person, the guy who is watching De Beers, is blind and sleeping on duty," Naholo said.
He claimed that the union's members were giving MUN reports that a lot of unidentified vessels were mining in Namibian waters and collecting diamonds with a helicopter before taking them to Cape Town.
"There is something seriously wrong in our economic affairs. These idiots are taking our richness away," Naholo shouted.
He also questioned the reason for selling Namibia's diamonds through De Beers' Central Selling Organisation (CSO) and paying commission to the company.
"Are we stupid? This is a crooked way put into place by De Beers while our people sit in the sun from seven to seven looking for jobs," Naholo fumed.
Naholo said the Namibian masses had yet to taste the fruits of the Government's 50-50 joint venture with De Beers in Namdeb, which was still perpetuating the abhorrent migrant labour system almost four years into the partnership.
"Namdeb is still accommodating workers in hostels which contribute to the increase of HIV/AIDS figures," Naholo said, adding that their members also did not have access to medical aid and were denied family life, irrespective of the marital status.
De Beers were approached to
comment on Naholo's remarks but had not responded at the time of going to press.
--
According to a report published by the Canadian NGO Partnership Africa Canada (PAC), the seven-year war in Sierra Leone was fueled by warlords, gangsters, government officials and international mining firms willing to go to almost any length to obtain valuable stones.
PAC is especially critical of the major diamond market in Antwerp, Belgium, saying Belgian officials ignored signs that many of the diamonds purchased from Liberia and other countries had clearly been smuggled out of Sierra Leone.
"There will never be a lasting peace in Sierra Leone until the diamond industry as a whole is properly managed, said Ian Smillie, co-author of the report.
U.S. Rep. Tony Hall, D-Ohio, said that during the war in that country "rebels had a group of maybe 500 soldiers, but because they seized the diamond mines, they quickly increased their 500-man army to 20,000, with some of the best weapons on the market".
In Angola, where war has raged for 25 years, the rebel forces known as UNITA are thought to have earned nearly $4 billion from so-called "conflict diamonds" since 1992.
Maintaining a fragile peace
United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan said on Wednesday that the peace now
established in Sierra Leone, where 75,000 civilians were killed and more than
one million were displaced, remained "very fragile" and urged the rapid
expansion of the U.N. force there from 6,000 to 11,100.
A Global Witness report
A Rough Trade: The Role of
Diamonds in Angola during the 1990s
"Tension and mistrust among the parties to the conflict continue,"
said Annan. "In addition, unruly members of some armed groups continue to
attack, rob and rape civilians in parts of the country, while humanitarian workers
are denied access to large parts of the population."
Robert Fowler, Canada's ambassador to the U.N. who is on a week-long visit to Angola, met the commander of the country's armed forces on Wednesday to try to trace the origin of rebel weapons. He is also reported to have met captured UNITA rebels.
"We have to identify the origin of the equipment (weapons) and figure out how it arrived in this country," he said.
Fowler arrived in Angola last Saturday to inspect efforts to stop rebels trading diamonds for arms and identify the sanctions-busting countries.
He is to report his findings to a special U.N. session on Angola on January 18 and present a formal report to the Security Council in March.
Barbaric acts reported at diamond mines
"The most barbaric, evil acts
have been carried out over diamond fields ... mutilations, mass mutilations. Thousands
of people have had their arms chopped off," said Alex Yearsley of Global
Witness, a London-based advocacy group that studied Angola's legal and illegal
trading in the 1990s.
The Canadian report on Sierra Leone's diamond trading urges the country's government "to ensure transparency, high standards and rigorous integrity in its diamond purchasing, valuation and oversight activities".
A professional diamond unit should be created to anticipate and counteract criminal activity, the report recommended.
The Belgian connection
The report criticizes Belgium's Hoge Raad voor Diamant
(Diamond High Council), based in Antwerp, an industry umbrella group whose role
is to strengthen Antwerp's position as a world diamond center and monitor imports
an exports for the Belgian government.
"In recent years, there have been a number ofjudicial inquiries which have shown that the overall (Belgian) system violates almost any system of neutrality, and is an invitation to corruption," the report says.
For example, Liberia's average annual mining capacity is 100,000 to 150,00 carats -- yet the HRD recorded more than 31 million carats imported into Belgium from that country between 1994 and 1998.
The report said that since the diamonds could not all have been mined in Liberia, it was obvious thatmost had been smuggled from Sierra Leone and other countries.
Similarly, the Ivory Coast apparently exported more than 1.5 million carats to Belgium each year between 1995 and 1997, although its diamond mining industry was closed in the mid-1980s.
In Sierra Leone in 1998, the government exported a mere 8,500 carats, but the HRD registered imports of 770,000 carats for that year coming from that country.
Smillie said PAC wanted a high-level inquiry into the diamond industry in Belgium. "The authorities are afraid that tightening up the industry will drive it out of Belgium to Israel, Lebanon or somewhere else," he said.
"In our view that's not a good enough reason to do nothing," said Smillie.
Industry shares blame
The report says the diamond industry should accept its
share of the blame as well, particularly South Africa-based De Beers, the largest
diamond dealer in the world.
"If De Beers were to take a greater interest in countries like Sierra Leone and if it were to stop purchasing large amounts of diamonds from countries with a negligible production base, much could be done to end the current high levels of theft and smuggling," the report says.
De Beers says it stopped trading in Sierra Leone many years ago and recently ceased doing business in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Tim Capon, a director of De Beers, said the company was not a policeman and that "we are fairly confident that we are not handling any diamonds that can be described as conflict diamonds".
The company pointed out that conflict diamonds account for only 7 percent of world diamond trading and cautioned against action that could harm legitimate trading.
Diamond-origin disclosure sought
In the United States, where consumers buy
65 percent of all the world's gem quality diamonds, legislation has been introduced
calling for disclosure of where diamonds are mined.
"I think if consumers knew the diamonds they were looking at were conflict diamonds, there would be a significant decrease in the buying of these kinds of diamonds," said Rep.Hall.
Correspondent Charlayne Hunter-Gault and Reuters
