Zimbabwe's president has said his nation will sell its massive reserves of diamonds despite not receiving authorization from the world's diamond control body.
A defiant President Robert Mugabe told lawmakers diamond sales have "huge potential" to revive the shattered economy. He said Zimbabwe can account for one-fourth of the world's diamond supply.
The Kimberley Process diamond certification scheme has not authorized international sales amid allegations of killings, human rights violations and corruption in the massive diamond fields discovered in eastern Zimbabwe in 2006.
"No one should doubt our resolve to sell our diamonds," Mugabe told lawmakers at the ceremonial opening of the Parliament in Harare.
Criticism by Western nations and human rights groups deadlocked a Kimberly Process meeting in Israel last month that sought approval for the sales after a regional monitor of the control body reported Zimbabwe had met minimum international diamond mining standards.
Mugabe said Zimbabwe's Western adversaries wanted "absurd" conditions put in place to block the diamond sales.

"We have to remain rooted in the reality we are the sole guarantors of our economic emancipation," he said.

Critics of Mugabe say his economic policies have contributed to precipitous economic decline in a decade of political turmoil that included the often violent seizures of thousands of white-owned farms that disrupted the agriculture-based economy.

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