Ivory Coast: Lift UN diamond ban

Ivory Coast will lobby for the lifting of a UN ban on its diamond exports at a meeting this week, a government official said, arguing its stones are no longer a threat to the country’s stability now its civil war is over.

The UN Security Council put an embargo on the West African nation’s diamonds in 2005 to stop their sale funding arms purchases and fuelling the conflict, which began in 2002.

Ivory Coast is the last remaining source of so-called blood diamonds and is the only country under a UN export ban of such gems.