Zimbabwe Finance Minister Tendai Biti says the Kimberley Process certification of Zimbabwe diamonds is a milestone in the way Zimbabwe's capital city Harare controls its resources. 

The Kimberley Process is in Zimbabwe for a review of the Chiadzwa Diamond
It's a "glorious occasion" for Zimbabwe, Biti added.  "For me, it was the issue of a sovereign country being denied the right to control its own resources… our right to self-determination, which was the cause of the war of liberation."
He complimented the organization's review soon after the certification of gems from the Marangue diamond minefield.

Kimberley Process is in Zimbabwe for a review of the Chiadzwa Diamond field operations.  The Chiadzwa diamonds have already been certified by the Kimberley Process.

The review was a closed-door meeting which included Deputy Prime Minister Arthur Mutambara as well as Mines and Mining Development Minister Obert Mpofu and a slew of Nambian, Australian, Canadian, American, Ghanian, and Brazilian officials.

The group also met with the Parliamentry Portfolio Committee on Mines and Energy. 

The Marangue diamond field is located in Chiadzwa, Zimbabwe over 566.5 kilometers. It was discovered in 2006 during the peak of a crisis in the country.  The field has always been controversial due to illegal mining activities in the area.

The Kimberley Process group was founded in the year 2000 after a public debate as to whether the blood diamonds issue was relevant. (In other words, did diamonds fund conflicts and wars in certain countries?) At the time, civil war was taking place in the Congo, Angola and Sierra Leone (consequently Naomi Campbell has recently testified at the blood diamonds trial of former Liberian president Charles Taylor who is charged with helping to find the civil war in Sierra Leone with uncut diamonds) and these civil wars were connected to each country's diamond mines.  Research found that diamonds were being used and traded by rebel groups to buy weapons for their conflicts. 

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