US dampens hopes of swift blood diamonds overhaul

By Wendell Roelf

CAPE TOWN (Reuters) - A review of a global scheme to monitor blood diamonds could bring changes to the Kimberley Process, under fire over its damaging loopholes, but the United States on Tuesday dampened hopes of a swift and comprehensive overhaul.

Speaking on the sidelines of a major industry gathering in South Africa, Gillian Milovanovic, the U.S. diplomat appointed last month to chair the process for 2012, said a committee led by Botswana was carrying out the review, but would not present results until November.

"The greatest challenge is to get agreement on what changes have taken place and what kind of an evolution this suggests for the organization," Milovanovic said, in one of her first public appearances since the United States took the rotating chairmanship this year.

"It is important that the process continues to be relevant and I think that requires a certain amount of revision and reform," she told reporters.

But she dashed some campaigners' hopes that the U.S. arrival as chair of the process at the start of 2012, a year short of its 10-year anniversary, would mark rapid change.

"The organization, it is no secret, had two years of extremely painful discussions and I think that now everyone is feeling a sense that its time to refocus on the process itself and on more than one country," she said.

Milovanovic said the process, under the U.S. presidency, would not review the decision to allow Zimbabwean diamonds from Marange, one of the biggest diamond finds in decades, onto world markets.

The Kimberley Process was set up in January 2003, aimed at cutting off "blood diamond" financing for rebel groups fighting a U.N.-recognised government.