Sierra Leone diamond income soars with peace.

 FREETOWN, April 23 (Reuters) - Sierra Leone's diamond income shot up more than 20-fold between 1999 and 2001 and is set to keep growing thanks to export controls and the end of a brutal civil war, Mines Minister Mohamed Deen said on Tuesday.

 A certification scheme was set up in 2000 with U.N. help to stem the flow of "blood diamonds" from the West African country, where rebels used gems sifted from muddy pits to fund a 10-year war marked by savage atrocities against

civilians.

Deen said legal exports in 2001 were worth $26.0 million - well over twice the 10.1 million in 2000, when certification began, and more than 20 times the $1.2 million for 1999.

"The government expects to benefit more in 2002, since law enforcement bodies are continuing to re-establish control in diamond areas formerly held by rebels," Deen told Reuters.

The war, in which thousands of civilians were killed, raped or mutilated, was declared over in January after more than 47,000 fighters handed over their weapons to U.N. peacekeepers.

 Legal diamond exports in 2001 rose to their highest in both value and weight - over 220,000 carats - since 1996. Deen has has forecast annual exports will eventually top $30 million, or 300,000 carats, a level not seen since 1992.

Exports via Freetown plummeted after the army seized power in 1997 and formed an alliance with the rebels. After that, many stones passed through neighbouring Liberia, whose President Charles Taylor supplied guns to the rebels until the U.N. banned Liberian diamond exports last year under sanctions to stop the spread of regional instability.

Most Sierra Leonean diamonds are shipped to the Belgian port of Antwerp, the world's biggest market for uncut diamonds.

One of the reasons the rebels launched their war was to end the systematic exploitation of Sierra Leone's diamonds by a succession of governments that left most people with next to no benefit from the gems.

Deen said that was changing. "A total of 25 percent of what the government gets from exports goes to the people for development in their local area, rather than before, when nothing went direct to the people."

Despite its mineral riches, the former British colony was ranked at bottom of the U.N.'s most recent human development table.

Deen said Sierra Leone's economy would improve once industrial miners returned to invest.

Canadian mining group DiamondWorks Ltd, forced to abandon its site in the eastern district of Kono after 1997, has said it will resume mining as soon as its installations are repaired.