By Irwin Arieff UNITED NATIONS, Dec 19 (Reuters) - Liberia still cannot adequately track diamond mining on its territory, U.N. experts reported on Tuesday, recommending the Security Council leave in place its ban on Liberian diamond exports. Liberian President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf has pushed hard for an end to the 5-year-old diamond embargo, saying the money from gem sales was badly needed to finance reconstruction in her war-ravaged West African country. But the panel of outside experts told the Security Council that Liberia had not yet met the requirements of the Kimberley Process, a program intended to prevent so-called blood diamonds from entering the mainstream diamond market. "Although most of the necessary components are now in hand, they still require final arrangement into a coherent and functioning mechanism with long-term durability and credibility," the panel said in its latest report on the impact of U.N. sanctions on Liberia. "Achieving this objective will require stronger leadership, especially by the Minister of Lands, Mines and Energy, as well as the effective ongoing management of human, financial and material resources," the panel said. The embargo was imposed in 2001, two years before the end of Liberia's 14-year diamond-fueled civil war. The council says it can lift the ban only after the government has in place the controls on gem sales demanded by the Kimberley Process, which requires participating governments to provide certificates for exports of rough diamonds to show they were mined from legitimate operations. The initiative between governments, the diamond industry and civic groups, launched in 2002, aims at ending the global trade in rough diamonds to finance wars against legitimate governments, as in Angola, Ivory Coast, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Sierra Leone. With war behind it and a new government in place, Liberia "has enjoyed a fragile peace" and is improving its management of state finances, the expert panel said. But it faces enormous reconstruction challenges and the government has been slow to demonstrate its campaign commitment to zero tolerance for corruption, it said.
