European Diary:Europe met Hollywood last night when external relations commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner presented a private screening of Blood Diamond, a film depicting the trade in conflict diamonds in Sierre Leone.
The film, starring Leonardo Di Caprio and Jennifer Connolly, is focusing global attention on the tens of millions of euro worth of diamonds mined in conflict zones in Africa which are sold clandestinely to finance wars and rebellions on the continent.
Over the past two decades Angola, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Liberia, the Ivory Coast and Sierra Leone have all been ravaged by civil wars funded from the global trade in rough diamonds. The barbaric 11-year civil war fought by the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) in Sierra Leone cost more than 75,000 lives in the 1990s. AK-47 rifles, grenade launchers and mortars were the main instruments of death, bought largely from Eastern Europe, China and Russia with diamond money.
The release of the Hollywood film in Ireland this week coincides with the EU's assumption of the chair of the Kimberely Process, an international certification system established in 2003 that seeks to block the global trade in blood diamonds.
"The Kimberley process is our best weapon against a trade in diamonds which fuels war and bloodshed," said Ms Ferrero-Waldner last week when Brussels laid out its plan for its 12-month chairmanship of the process that has more than 50 participants, including all the major diamond-producing, trading and processing countries.
It works by requiring every shipment of rough diamonds to be accompanied by a certificate proving that they do not come from conflict zones and introducing new laws and regulations in member states to closely monitor the trade. In the three years since it came into force Kimberely seems to be working, with blood diamond exports falling from an estimate of 4 per cent of the global trade to about 0.2 per cent.
So is there any need for the EU as chair of the process to propose any changes?
"We will work to try and remove the remaining 0.2 per cent of blood diamonds," says Karel Kovanda, deputy director general of the commission's external relations department, who believes the popularity of the Hollywood film gives policymakers a unique opportunity to draw public attention to the issue of blood diamonds.
Brussels has set three priorities for its chairmanship: tightening controls and boosting transparency of Kimberely; introducing new penalties for breaching the system; and addressing concerns related to diamond exports from states such as Ghana.
"There is one remaining conflict area from where diamonds are exported and that is the Ivory Coast. They cannot export them legally under Kimberely and there are concerns the stones are smuggled into Ghana and exported from there," says Kovanda, who will work with the authorities there to tighten their export controls.
Brussels will also investigate whether Kimberely could be extended to help tackle exploitation of workers in diamond mines and also whether a similar system of regulation could be introduced to govern the trade in other raw materials such as timber and gold.Yet Brussels has so far resisted the demands by non-government organisations such as Amnesty and Global Witness to extend the administration of Kimberely.
"We want to see greater government regulation on the whole diamond industry, not just the rough diamond sector. The manufacturing sector and the retail sector do not need yet need full Kimberely certificates authorised by governments, says Alex Yearsley, a spokesman for the NGO Global Witness. "We also need tighter controls in states within Kimberely to crack down on smuggling across borders."
Global Witness also disputes the diamond industry and commission's argument that Kimberely is working well and responsible for the dip in blood diamond exports.
"I agree that the exports have gone down, but this is mostly because of the end of conflicts in Africa in Angola and Sierra Leone in 2002. The real test for Kimberely will be when new conflicts erupt in the area."
This is not a view shared in Antwerp, the global hub for buying and selling rough diamonds that trades eight out of 10 diamonds worldwide.
Last week the Antwerp World Diamond Centre (AWDC) - the official representative body for the diamond sector - issued a statement regretting the "totally false image" that the film creates of the diamond industry over its role in trading blood diamonds. "Very little or no attention at all is paid to the many strict measures that have been in force in the sector for many years," said Freddy J Hanard, managing director of the Antwerp World Diamond Centre (AWDC), in the statement.
Clearly, NGO attempts to toughen up Kimberely will not be accepted easily, but with global attention directed toward blood diamonds at the moment there probably isn't a better time to try.