All eyes will be on Zimbabwe in Kimberley Process circles in 2009, Rapaport, the primary source of diamond market information, said on its website on Tuesday.

The Kimberley Process organisation would be forced to take a stance on illicit diamonds that may not necessarily be fuelling conflict in Zimbabwe, but may be benefiting a corrupt government, Rapaport said.

The Kimberley Process Certification Scheme is a process introduced by United Nations resolution 55/56 that is designed to certify the origin of rough diamonds from sources which are free of conflict.

Rapaport said Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe had done little to combat rising poverty and the spread of cholera in the country.

It noted, however, that Mugabe had cracked down on the illegal trade that had developed at the Marange diamond fields, "thinking his government was being cheated out of a billion dollars a month in diamond revenues," Rapaport said.

"A more realistic count would've been tens of thousands of dollars worth of smuggled diamonds each month."

Either way, NGOs and diamond organisations eventually cried foul on Zimbabwe "but fell short of having it banned from the Kimberley Process," Rapaport said, adding that 2009 would be "particularly interesting" as neighbouring Namibia would take over the Kimberley Process chairmanship shortly.

Rapaport noted that violence had flared up in the African diamond-producing countries -- the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Guinea.

It was also noted that at the Hague, "the highest profile conflict diamonds case to date got under way", as Charles Taylor, former president of Liberia, went on trial for his role in using diamonds to fuel the conflict in Sierra Leone.