MOZAMBIQUE is speeding up preparations to join an international conflict diamond monitoring scheme amid widespread diamond smuggling from Zimbabwe’s state-run Marange mines, it was reported yesterday.

Mining Minister Esperanca Bias said Mozambique, which hopes to start mining its own diamonds soon, wants to join the Kimberley Process diamond certification scheme by December, Noticias newspaper reported.

Ms Bias said prospecting was under way so the government had to join the Kimberley Process in earnest. Twenty-seven companies and individuals are prospecting for diamonds in Mozambique under 40 separate licences. Tests are already being done to see if some samples are commercially viable, she said.

Her announcement comes amid warnings that diamond smugglers were expanding trade in gems worth millions of dollars from neighbouring Zimbabwe’s Marange diamond mines through the central Mozambican border town of Manica.

The Kimberley Process last year allowed two special sales of Marange diamonds. Its chairman, Mathieu Yamba, has ties with Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe and has been accused of bias

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