This system needs a global approach in which all countries hosting diamond industry participate. It is worked out now by the Word Diamond Council and the London Ministerial Conference. This system must be given a chance. It is the result of months of work from industry and governments, directly involved.

During the Antwerp World Diamond Congress, leading politicians supported the proposed solution. Peter HAIN, British Foreign Minister of State said: "Today I come not to ‘name and shame’ but to ‘name and praise’. (…) To praise recent moves taken by the Belgian, Indian and Israeli trade associations to clamp down on the small minority of rogue traders in conflict diamonds who discredit the vast majority. (…) And you are right that it would be unfair, if we focused solely on diamonds. But we are not. The British Government is actively supporting the UN in stopping those who break sanctions on the supply of weapons and fuel."

Robert FOWLER, Canadian Ambassador to the UN confirmed: "I am truly amazed and heartened by the alacrity with which your industry is taking the right decision. (…) I welcome the technical assistance the Diamond High Council has provided to the governments of Angola and Sierra Leone to improve domestic controls and encourage the HRD and others, including donor governments, to continue such efforts."

The HRD invites now other industries such as oil and weapons to join us and work out similar solutions. Although these other industries have a higher strategic importance than diamonds and although they are located in bigger countries, their involvement in the conflict is far more important.

One cannot blame the diamond industry not to be able to prevent every small scale smuggling across the African borders and at the same time close the eyes for tanks and aircrafts full of weapons crossing that same border in the opposite direction. And a conflict needs oil, if it isn’t in the ground as natural resource then to fuel military machinery. Global Witness published in December 1999 a report about the role of the oil and banking industries in Angola’s civil war.

So we ask for an honest debate in which the role of all industries involved is analysed in the same way. A debate that takes into account the actual and earlier international political and military actions to stop the conflicts. A debate that evaluates the actions of all industries concerned. Because no intellectual honest person can say diamonds are the cause of conflicts. Diamonds are indeed also prisoner of war of conflicts.