WFDB Joins Criticism Over KP Failure, Impact ‘May Be Disastrous‘
June 28, 11(IDEX Online News) – The “uncompromising positions taken by some Kimberley Process (KP) members,” which led to a continued stalemate on the issue of Zimbabwe’s rough diamond exports, is facing increasing criticism in the diamond world.
Avi Paz, president of the World Federation of Diamond Bourses (WFDB), is the latest to express concern over the failure to work out a solution.
Without naming who he is criticizing, Paz said the lack of agreement regarding the future of rough diamond exports from the Marange region in Zimbabwe would be detrimental in particular to the downstream end of the diamond supply pipeline.
Following the lack of agreement last week at the KP Intersessional Meeting in Kinshasa, Paz said the impasse had the potential to hit the well-being of the global diamond industry.
The WFDB president pointed out that the effect would be felt most immediately at the lower end of the diamond supply pipeline, but would soon have an overall negative impact on the upper end of the diamond industry as well.
Paz said that millions of people in Zimbabwe and in manufacturing centers such as India are harmed by the impasse. “It is very sad that through the politicization of the KP talks, some of the KP members have lost sight of what the original objectives of the KP are. At the same time, they are using the unique structure of the KP, with its consensual decision making process, to hold up the process and serve secondary goals that are foreign to the KP," Paz noted.