WARNING: This is Version 1 of my old archive, so Photos will NOT work and many links will NOT work. But you can find articles by searching on the Titles. There is a lot of information in this archive. Use the SEARCH BAR at the top right. Prior to December 2012; I was a pro-Christian type of Conservative. I was unaware of the mass of Jewish lies in history, especially the lies regarding WW2 and Hitler. So in here you will find pro-Jewish and pro-Israel material. I was definitely WRONG about the Boeremag and Janusz Walus. They were for real.
Original Post Date: 2010-09-09 Time: 10:00:01 Posted By: News Poster
By Alex Bell
A second auction of the country’s controversial diamonds is set to be held in secret, after the Mines Ministry announced it would not make the details of the sale public.
The auction is expected to be soon, amid reports that the international monitor in charge of certifying the diamonds for sale is expected in Zimbabwe this week. Abbey Chikane, the monitor appointed by the international trade watchdog the Kimberley Process (KP), is reportedly set to arrive in the country on Thursday to approve a second auction.
Officials in the Mines Ministry have refused to confirm when Chikane is arriving, saying future diamond sales would be private. The Ministry says this is for security reasons, arguing that diamond buyers would prefer to bid on the stones without media attention.
The first auction was held last month, not long after the KP and the Mines Ministry reached an agreement that paved for the way for the resumption of exports under monitoring conditions. Sales had been banned last year over human rights abuses at the Chiadzwa diamond fields, which still remain controlled by the military. The agreement reached with the KP allows the Mines Ministry to sell a stockpile of diamonds mined at Chiadzwa over the past year.
KP monitor Chikane last month certified a portion of that stockpile as ‘conflict free’, allowing their legal sale. An estimated US$72 million was generated from the sale, and it’s understood the government claimed US$30 million of the profits as the 50% shareholder in the firms mining in Chiadzwa.
The sale went ahead despite the diamonds being at the centre of a legal battle over the Chiadzwa site’s ownership. The legal title holders, UK based African Consolidated Resources (ACR), warned that the diamonds were essentially stolen, after the company was forced off the claim at gunpoint in 2006. ACR warned that the sale was in contempt of a Supreme Court ruling, which ordered the firms mining at Chiadzwa to cease all operations until the ownership fight was settled.
The Supreme Court ruling came a few months after the High Court ruled that ACR was the legal title holder, validating the company’s rights to mine at Chiadzwa.
But this week the High Court made a shock u-turn in revoking that earlier ruling. Critics have said this was at the behest of the government to ‘clear the air’ over the contested diamonds, in preparation for the second auction.
Original date published: 8 September 2010
Source: http://allafrica.com/stories/201009090178.html?viewall=1