(Rapaport…August 2, 2000) Anwarul Chowdhury, Bangladesh’s UN Ambassador and chairman of the Security Council committee monitoring sanctions on Sierra Leone, said a proposal to certify diamond origins should be in place by next week.
Liberian Foreign Minister Monie Captan was critical, saying that the plan wouldn’t work as long as Sierra Leone’s rebel movement, the Revolutionary United Front, (RUF) controlled the countries major diamond mines.
Peter Takirambudde of Human Rights Watch said, “A certificate of origin is like a passport. It only states that a diamond has been exported from a country, theoretically legitimately. But they do not guarantee that the stones are not conflict diamonds.”
Chowdhury admitted that the hearings did shed light on “counterpoints” to the proposed certification plan, and that all evidentiary information will be taken into account before anything is finalized.