UN extends sanctions to diamonds

The UN Security Council has unanimously approved a new resolution to ban imports of rough diamonds from war-torn Cote d’Ivoire and renew an existing arms embargo. Individual sanctions, repeatedly threatened by the UN, have not yet been implemented. Instead, the 15-member body reiterated its willingness to impose travel bans and asset freezes on individuals deemed to have impeded the peace process, committed human rights violations, publicly incited hatred and violence, or violated the arms embargo. The Security Council on Thursday “renewed for another year the arms embargo and the travel and financial restrictions imposed on the country on 15 November 2004 and decided to ban imports of rough diamonds from the country,” read the resolution. Cote d’Ivoire is bogged down by a three-year old conflict that sliced the country in two when rebels seized the north in a failed coup in September 2002 and the government retained the south after the intervention of troops from former colonial power France. The new ban on Ivorian diamonds follows a report by a UN team of experts who travelled to Cote d’Ivoire to assess whether the warring parties had adhered to the November 2004 arms embargo. The experts reported to the Security Council at the end of last month that rebels were selling rough diamonds to fund military spending. The team also reported that cocoa earnings were being used to fund military spending in government territories. “Cocoa plays an important role in providing funds for the off-budget and extrabudgetary military procurement efforts of the Government,” the report stated. Cote d’Ivoire is the world’s largest cocoa producing nation, producing some 40 percent of the world crop. Cocoa was the driving force of the Ivorian economy in the boom years that followed independence in 1960. But recent conflict has shattered the Cote d’Ivoire’s image as a haven of stability and three years of international negotiations and mediations have failed to resolve the standoff between the rebel and loyalist camps. Newly appointed Prime Minister Charles Konan Banny, who was levered into position just over a week ago after weeks of pan-African pressure to shepherd the country to peace, is still to name his cabinet. The new prime minister takes over a deadlocked peace process and will have to organise a long delayed programme of disarmament, resolve the sensitive issue of who is entitled to citizenship, and organise presidential elections -- all before an October 2006 deadline. An attempt to hold elections last 30 October failed due to a deadlock in talks between the factions on all these issues, forcing the UN to extend President Laurent Gbagbo’s mandate for 12 months by special resolution.