November 29, 2001 Thursday
Late Edition - Final
A NATION CHALLENGED: THE MONEY TRAIL; House Votes to Combat Sale of Diamonds for War
BYLINE: By JOSEPH KAHN
SECTION: Section B; Column 1; National Desk; Pg. 6
LENGTH: 544 words
DATELINE: WASHINGTON, Nov. 28
The House voted today to give President Bush the power to impose trade-related sanctions on nations that sell diamonds to finance war or terrorism, a step that supporters say will help stem the trade of so-called blood diamonds.
The measure sailed through the House 408 to 6 after reports linked Osama bin Laden and his terrorist network, Al Qaeda, to the African diamond trade, which is also thought to a major cause of civil wars in sub-Saharan Africa.
While human rights groups favored stronger steps to pressure nations to ban imports of diamonds and other gems that finance violent conflicts, the House's compromise bill has the backing of the Bush administration. The Senate has not yet taken up a similar bill.
"This is an historic step to introduce transparency to the diamond trade and take the profits away from people responsible for carnage in Africa," said Representative Tony P. Hall, an Ohio Democrat who was a sponsor of the measure.
Warlords and terrorists in Angola, Sierra Leone and Congo have fought for years for control of diamond mines, using the diamonds themselves to finance their war efforts, United Nations officials and human rights groups say. Battling militias in those countries have killed millions of people and maimed millions of others in some of the worst human rights abuses in the world, these groups say.
The United States buys nearly two-thirds of all finished diamonds, and the threat of losing access to the American market could pressure countries to cooperate with United Nations-backed efforts to police the trade in diamonds, which are easily transported and hard to trace.
Bush administration officials have opposed international efforts to impose stringent controls on the purchase and sale of diamonds at every step from producer to consumer, arguing that such measures are onerous and may run afoul of international trade rules.
But the administration softened its position after reports that Mr. bin Laden and his supporters may have made millions of dollars acquiring raw diamonds at low prices from Sierra Leone and reselling them at high market prices. The reports first appeared in The Washington Post.
"That is what put us over the edge," Mr. Hall said.
A separate effort to combat the sale of illicit diamonds is under way at an international conference in Botswana this week. Nations there are seeking to devise a system that would ban the cross-border sale of rough diamonds unless they have a passport denoting weight, value and provenance, making it harder for a country to export more diamonds than it can prove it produced legally.
Supporters of the House vote regard it as helping that United Nations-backed effort. The Bush administration, however, has sought to water down international inspection and certification measures, preferring to deal with illegal diamond sales on a case-by-case basis.
Adotei Akwei, who follows the diamond trade issue for Amnesty International, the human rights organization, said that the Bush administration had so far delivered "half a loaf" by agreeing to use presidential authority to ban imports on an ad hoc basis. But he said that much more remained to be done.
"We still have serious reservations about whether the United States will participate fully," he said.