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http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewForeignBureaus.asp?Page=/ForeignBureaus/archive/200608/INT20060804c.html

"Illicit Diamond Trade Used by Hizballah and Others"
By Stephen Mbogo
CNSNews.com Correspondent
August 04, 2006

Nairobi, Kenya (CNSNews.com) -

ARTICLE SNIPPET: "The international community should speed up efforts to prevent terrorist groups from using the proceeds from illicit diamond trade to finance their activities and launder their funds, campaigners say.

A Nairobi-based African affairs analyst, Adan Mohamed, said it was "very likely" that groups like Hizballah still use the trade to raise additional revenue.

"Nothing much has happened in putting mechanisms in place to prevent diamond trade from being used to clean dirty cash or finance conflicts," he said.

Investigations by researchers, human rights groups, the United Nations and media organizations have revealed how Hizballah exploited weakness in the international diamond trade monitoring systems to hide their assets and raise funds.

The illicit trade was mainly carried out in the West African nations of Sierra Leone, Liberia and the Ivory Coast, and further south in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)."

ARTICLE SNIPPET #2: "The small but influential Lebanese community in West Africa, comprising mostly Shiites, was also found to be instrumental in facilitating the transfer of illicit diamonds to Hizballah.

A 2004 report in the Middle East Intelligence Bulletin, a publication of the Middle East Forum and the U.S. Committee for a Free Lebanon, said that although the U.S. authorities had been able to reduce the flow of Hizballah financing from networks in the U.S., "it appears that one lucrative source of Hizballah financing is still growing: the diamond trade in West Africa."

Security information consultant group Strategic Forecasting (Stratfor) said last month that Hizballah could finance new attacks on Israeli targets abroad using funds from a profitable "blood diamond" network in West Africa.

Another group that has in the past documented how Hizballah and al-Qaeda have used diamonds from West Africa to finance their terrorist activities is the international NGO, Global Witness.

In a new report, the group says efforts to monitor the international movement of diamonds have not been successful and more needs to be done."

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Note: The following text is a quote:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/08/20060804-6.html

For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
August 4, 2006

President Signs H.R. 5877 and S. 3741

On Friday, August 4, 2006, the President signed into law:

H.R. 5877, which extends the Iran and Libya Sanctions Act until September 29, 2006; and

S. 3741, which authorizes the transfer of funds to the Department of State's "Emergencies in the Diplomatic and Consular Service" account and makes available other funds to facilitate the emergency departure of U.S. citizens from Lebanon.

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