The Congo Brazzaville government admitted last week that a wide network of illegal diamond trafficking was operating in the region but said it was unable to stem the traffic, according to South African news reports. The small country, next to the much larger Democratic Republic of Congo, has been accused of ongoing diamond smuggling by experts studying the issue.

"Diamonds are being smuggled in without us or other diamond-producing countries able to control the situation," Mining Minister Philippe Mvouo told reporters. "It is difficult to control our borders and we maintain our total innocence."

His statement came after a Kimberley Process fact-finding mission visited Congo between May 31 and June 3 to assess the country's diamond production.

The Kimberley Process aims to stop the traffic of rough diamonds that fund insurgencies in unstable African countries.

Launched in May 2000, the Kimberley Process mandates a certificate system which allows producers, exporters and purchasers to find out easily if the diamond has been acquired through legal or illegal means.

Abbey Chikane, who led the fact-finding mission to Congo, deplored the lack of controls on small-scale diamond mines as well as the lack of statistics on production and of registries on sales which do not mention the origin of some of the diamonds traded.

"Small-scale producers, collectors and trading centres must have registries that mention the origin of diamonds," Mvouo agreed. But he added that the problem lay not with diamonds mined in Congo but those that are smuggled into the country.

Congo, which began producing diamonds in the 1960s, has been a member of the Kimberley Process since March 2003. The country's diamond production jumped from 988,000 carats in 1961 to 4.6 million carats in 2003.