HARARE – Deputy mines minister Gift Chimanikire on Thursday insisted that the Kimberley Process (KP) has approved exports of the country’s Marange diamonds as Harare and the diamond watchdog continued issuing conflicting statements about the controversial gemstones.

The KP that regulates the world diamond industry has set January 10 as the deadline for all participants in the voluntary monitoring scheme to respond to a revised draft agreement on the fate of Zimbabwe’s stockpiled diamonds. This, after Harare rejected the initial agreement last November.

But Chimanikire, who on Monday told ZimOnline that the KP had already approved sales of the diamonds, last night insisted Harare had “documentary evidence” to show this, adding that a meeting of the KP he said was scheduled for January 10 would not change the decision to allow Zimbabwe to export the diamonds.

"They gave us that authorisation unless they are now denying it,” said Chimanikire, speaking to ZimOnline after a KP spokesman refuted the deputy minister’s earlier claims that the regulator had approved Marange diamond sales.

A spokesperson for the new KP chairperson, the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s Yamba Mathieu Lapfa Lambang, was quoted by Rapaport News as saying that claims that the international watchdog had sanctioned exports from the controversial Marange fields were untrue.

“No decision has been made yet,” the spokesperson said.

But Chimanikire was adamant that the KP approved Marange diamond exports.

He said: “We have documentary evidence, they wrote us a letter informing us about the authorisation. In the letter they indicated that a meeting will be held on Jan 10, which is next week. That meeting will not change anything at all because they have already indicated that we can sell."

ZimOnline was last night unable to reach Lambang and the KP’s Zimbabwe monitor Abbey Chikane, who is based in South Africa, for further clarification on the matter.

The DRC took over the chairmanship of the KP from Israel on January 1.

But Lambang’s spokesperson told Rapaport News that the KP chairman was still waiting for a response from participants to an amendment to the draft administrative decision that was sent out in late December.

The amendment raises the veto conditions allowed to the KP’s Working Group for Monitoring (WGM) so that any three members of the WGM, rather than two previously suggested, can submit a report should Zimbabwe breach the joint working plan to bring the Marange operations into compliance.

Zimbabwe is seeking unconditional approval to conduct the sales.

Should the participants accept the amendment, the revised proposal will be forwarded to Zimbabwe for approval, the spokesperson said.

The KP banned Zimbabwe from selling diamonds from the Marange fields in 2009 over allegations of human rights abuses in the extraction of the gems and failure to meet minimum requirements for trading in the precious stones.

But the organisation allowed Zimbabwe to conduct two supervised sales which took place in August and September last year following a report by Chikane that said Harare had met all KP conditions.

The issue of Zimbabwe selling the Marange diamonds has divided the KP along political lines, with Western countries led by the United States, Germany and Australia as well as civil society groups that are members of the organisation calling for the extension of a ban.

African and other countries, including Russia, have however opposed the calls to ban the diamonds.

Zimbabwe has criticised the calls for a ban of the Marange stones, accusing the West of using the diamonds issue to punish President Robert Mugabe for taking land from white farmers and reallocating it to blacks.

By Zimonline