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Last update - 04:30 29/10/2009
Israel rejects UN allegations it exports 'blood diamonds'
By Reuters
Tags: Israel News, Blood Diamonds 

Israel rejected on Wednesday accusations by a UN panel of experts that the Middle East nation may be involved in the illegal export and sale of so-called "blood diamonds" from the Ivory Coast.

Israel's Diamond Controller Shmuel Mordechai said he was shocked by what he called "false accusations" in the experts report to the UN Security Council on international compliance with UN sanctions imposed on the Ivory Coast.

Along with Israel, the panel on Tuesday also named the United Arab Emirates, Lebanon, Guinea and Liberia as some of the countries that needed to step up efforts to enforce a four-year-old UN embargo on buying rough diamonds mined in the Ivory Coast.
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"Israel has never dealt in diamond trade with the Ivory Coast," Mordechai said in a statement. "We are shocked by these false accusations and completely refute them."

The Security Council is expected on Thursday to renew for another year embargoes on arms and rough diamond sales and other sanctions on the Ivory Coast, the world's top cocoa producer, which is still recovering from a civil war.

The Ivory Coast report recommended Israel "investigate fully the possible involvement of Israeli nationals and companies in the illegal export of Ivorian rough diamonds."

But Mordechai said the UN experts visited Israel twice in recent years and were provided with "unequivocal proof" that it had never dealt in rough diamonds from the Ivory Coast or any other countries that are not members of the Kimberley Process.

The Kimberley Process certification scheme, designed to eliminate the trade in "blood diamonds," was set up in 2003 in the wake of devastating civil wars in Angola, Sierra Leone, and Liberia, which were largely financed by illicit diamond trade.

Before its implementation, conflict stones made up about 15 percent of the world market. Though they are believed to account for less than 1 percent of stones bought and sold now, millions of carats produced annually remain untraceable.

Israel said it would lodge an official complaint about its inclusion in the UN report at a meeting of Kimberley Process members in Namibia next month.
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  1.   Israel and the world of diamonds 06:14  |  Mark Lincoln 29/10/09
  2.   Send spokesmen to school 06:46  |  Colin Wright 29/10/09
  3.   Must be hard to keep up 07:36  |  stella westwell 29/10/09
  4.   BUY Australian blue diamonds 08:33  |  PETER SM 29/10/09
  5.   Open season on Israel! 09:18  |  Disgusted 29/10/09
  6.   Israel: A light on to all nations 09:25  |  The Hague 29/10/09
  7.   Enough UN "experts" will destroy the UN 09:50  |  a wandering Jew 29/10/09
  8.   dirty diamonts? 10:04  |  Michelle 29/10/09
  9.   UN "experts" 10:27  |  a wandering Jew 29/10/09
  10.   Now its blood diamonds. I wonder whats next. 10:31  |  Stephen. 29/10/09
  11.   Open season on Israel? 11:38  |  AB 29/10/09
  12.   To Disgusted 11:42  |  Teacher 29/10/09
  13.   PALESTINEthats because your eyes are shut tighter than your brain 11:53  |  PETER SM 29/10/09
  14.   # 5 disgusted 12:24  |  Axel 29/10/09
  15.   # 8 stephen 12:26  |  Axel 29/10/09
  16.   #5 Disgusted. You should be disgusted! 12:42  |  Maureen Ann 29/10/09
  17.   I`ve worked in Hatton Garden and I believe report might b true 12:51  |  ez 29/10/09
  18.   #11 PeterSM. Who are you speaking to? 12:52  |  Maureen Ann 29/10/09
  19.   Is there any wrong Israel is NOT guilty of in the UN`s eyes? 13:10  |  IW 29/10/09
  20.   Israel 13:29  |  just sick 29/10/09
  21.   Lincoln`s "honesty." 15:13  |  SDHD 29/10/09
  22.   Yeh, right! And the Girls From Eastern Europe Brought Into Israel 17:03  |  Yaakov Sullivan 29/10/09
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