Chronicle EditorNEW YORK. — The UN Security Council lifted a nearly decade-old embargo on Ivory Coast’s international diamond trade yesterday and relaxed its arms embargo there. The diamond embargo was declared in 2005 because the stones were helping fund the Forces Nouvelles rebels that controlled the north of the country after a failed coup attempt in 2002 against then-president Laurent Gbagbo.
However, the diamond trade is now regulated by the Kimberley Process, of which Ivory Coast is a member, and the UN oversight is seen as redundant. A resolution adopted by the body’s 15 member states terminates “the measures preventing the importation by any state of all rough diamonds from Cote d’Ivoire . . . in light of progress made towards Kimberley Process Certification.”
Ivory Coast has for months been asking to be allowed to legally re-start exporting its diamonds, and last November, the government got the green light from the Kimberley Process for the United Nations to lift its embargo. — Xinhua
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