Zimbabwe given reprieve from suspension by "blood diamonds" body

Windhoek/Maputo - Zimbabwe avoided suspension from the global certified diamond trade on Thursday after an international diamond watchdog decided to give the country more time to polish up its diamond dealings. The Kimberley Process Certification Scheme, which monitors trade in so-called conflict diamonds, was wrapping up four days of deliberations on Zimbabwe's diamonds, among other matters, in Namibia. 'Its suspension could not come to fruition because it was held that we should give them an opportunity to address issues of compliance and removing the military and things like that,' Bernhard Esau, KPCS chairman and Namibia's deputy mines minister told the German Press Agency dpa. Instead, the KP, which has 49 members representing 75 countries, had drawn up an action plan with timelines which Zimbabwe would be required to follow, he said. Human rights activists had been calling for Zimbabwe's diamonds to be suspended from the KP scheme following a brutal crackdown by the military on diamond diggers and villagers in the country's eastern Marange diamond fields over the past year. A KP review team, after visiting Zimbabwe in July and hearing testimony from victims, had recommended that Zimbabwe be suspended from importing or exporting rough diamonds within the Process until it complied with KP norms. Zimbabwe was also under discussion in Mozambique Thursday, where southern African leaders were meeting in yet another attempt to try to free the country's political logjam. President Robert Mugabe and Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai held talks with several leaders from the Southern African Development Community (SADC) regional political bloc to discuss a way out of their three-week standoff. SADC, which acts as the guarantor of Zimbabwe's uneasy unity pact, was represented by SADC chairman, Democratic Republic of Congo president Joseph Kabila, Mozambican President Armando Guebuza, Zambian President Rupiah Banda and President Jacob Zuma of South Africa and Swazi King Mswati III. Zimbabwe's shaky eight-month-old coalition government has been in crisis since Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) staged a partial pull-out last month. The MDC is boycotting cabinet meetings over Zanu-PF's refusal to to fully share power and implement agreed-upon reforms. MDC ministers are continuing to run their portfolios, however. Addressing the opening of the talks, an upbeat Guebuza said the two parties 'had more points in convergence than divergence.' Several human rights organizations have warned the dispute risks tipping the country back into the political violence that characterized last year's presidential election.