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Gold/Mining/Energy : DIAMONDWORKS DMW.v -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: OnSide who wrote (309)	7/7/1999 3:49:00 PM
From: marcos	Respond to of 413

U.N. Official, Rebel: Sierra Leone's Warring Parties Reach Peace Deal AP 07-JUL-99 LOME, Togo (AP) -- Sierra Leone's warring sides reached a peace deal today to end eight years of civil war in the West African nation, rebel and U.N. officials said. The agreement came after the feared rebel movement backed down on key demands, the sources said. The accord was to be signed by Sierra Leone's President Ahmed Tejan Kabbah and rebel Revolutionary United Front leader Foday Sankoh at a summit of regional leaders in Togo's capital of Lome later today, U.N. envoy Francis Okello said. A rebel official, who declined to be named, confirmed the deal. He said the insurgents -- who have been seriously divided in the past -- were united behind Sankoh, who approved the deal. "Nobody rejects the leader's commands," the rebel official said. "We must have peace for the country and we are going to give the nation peace." Yet questions remained as to whether the agreement to formally end one of the world's bloodiest conflicts would be accepted by Sierra Leonean fighters and civilians. The war has devastated the nation and forced up to half of its four million people to flee their homes. Civilians and international human rights groups accuse the rebels of systematically killing, mutilating and raping thousands of people in a bid to gain power through terror. The exact death toll is not known. An earlier peace deal in 1996 collapsed within months when rebel and military forces toppled Kabbah's government in a coup. The bloodletting that followed escalated to the highest levels since the war began in 1991. Kabbah was restored to power last March after regional troops drove the junta from the capital. The new agreement called for the rebels to be given a power-sharing role with Kabbah's elected government, including four rebel Cabinet ministers' posts and four deputies, said a U.N. official, speaking on condition of anonymity. At the last minute, the insurgents had demanded six to eight ministers' posts, the official said, but international mediators and the rebels' own allies, including Liberia's President Charles Taylor, pressured them to back down. The accord also provided for a "reprieve" from prosecution for rebels who committed war crimes, the official added, although the conditions on the pardons remained unclear. Another key rebel demand, that Nigerian-led West African troops defending Sierra Leone's government be excluded from a new peacekeeping force, was dropped. The intervention force, known as ECOMOG, would remain in Sierra Leone. Mediator Joseph Koffigoh, Togo's foreign minister, said Taylor _ whose government has been accused of providing weapons and troops to the rebels -- had pushed the insurgents to allow the ECOMOG forces to remain. "Sierra Leoneans are tired of the war and the whole sub-region is fed up with the fighting," Koffigoh said. The Nigerian-led troops are the strongest military force backing Sierra Leone's government. Besides Liberia, Burkina Faso has been accused of supplying troops and weapons to the rebels. U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan was expected to pay a one-day visit to Sierra Leone on Thursday in a bid to drum up international support for the peace process. Along with Kabbah, Sankoh and Taylor, the presidents of Nigeria, Burkina Faso and Togo also attended the summit. >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>end paste<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< That's from cnn Custom News ... great service, they'll send you country- and subject-specific articles as they come out. customnews.cnn.com I don't fully understand the market reaction here either ... what attracted me to dmw was First Mary's wall at .18 and .185 for a few weeks, combined with the pattern of acquisition by Ekuseni ... we can't know for sure if the two phenomena are connected, but of course one suspects all sorts of things. I don't have market depth as i'm not trading much lately, but just from overall available info this one looks like a reasonable risk/reward to me .... mines are working, the second plant should be up and running at Yetwene as we speak, i would judge that dmw is nearing positive cash flow and the worst of the scarey period is over for them ... the JCI people clearly value the paper [imho Ekuseni was planned to do what it just did] ... that's me on the bid at .165 ... not betting the ranch here but i do find it fascinating ..... cheers

To: OnSide who wrote (309)	7/7/1999 7:47:00 PM
From: marcos	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 413

Negatives ... First the Bad News - 1. Africa - Big country risk here, everybody knows Africa is a horror show, the best you can hope for is sporadic intermissions. The least advanced of the continents, banditry and warlordism is endemic. The last white-led government of Africa, the Afrikaaners, have fallen ... while ANC moderates with their huge international support may sustain some degree of order for the near term, who knows what is coming down the pipe. Life has no guarantees anywhere, but in Africa it may have a Best Before sticker on it. 2. Muchísimo paper out - 178.5mil out, 285.2mil fd ... that's a whole bunch, well past rollback point for many juniors or smallcap producers. 3. The Friedland connection - Robert Friedland, a focus of considerable less-than-laudatory attention in the press, remains, to my knowledge, a minority shareholder. 4. The Branch/Hansard/Buckingham/Grunberg connection - lots of negative articles out there, put any combination of those names into altavista.com, dogpile.com, google.com, and you'll pull up reams by Politically Correct Pundits who see the security efforts as some sort of Return of the Tsars private army effort to establish a pillaging empire by brute force. 5. The chart - Hey, if the trend is your friend, this one needs pallbearers. 6. Diamonds are really small things, and some people wonder whether other people put some in their pockets instead of putting them all in the company sack so they can wend their merry way to the bottom line on the annual report. We just don't trust each other any more - try cashing a cheque at a 7-11 and you'll see what i mean. 7. The JCI/Ekuseni thing - Where's the evidence to indicate that once the JCI people have control ... assuming that they're after control, which it looks like to me ... that they will from the goodness of their hearts reward minority shareholders of dmw for their patience through these troubled times? The last RSA/Canuck diamond doings were DeBeers doing it to Southernera, and the SUFferers still have trouble passing solids, or five bucks for that matter. 8. The First Mary wall - Now it may not be there any more, i don't know, but up until last Friday there was size sitting on or just above the ask having the effect of serious weight on the price, but lacking the appearance, to me, of really really wanting to be sold. If the purpose of this was to prepare the price for a financing or debt conversion, the dilution at these levels will add to Negative No. 2, not that it, hah!, makes a great deal of difference at this point, given paper out already. 9. The deadness of this thread. People will PM me on it but there's a grand total of three of us posting - Why is that? ... It's nowhere near the number that ipmcf or bxm or kry enjoyed in their respective heydays. Now don't get me wrong, i'm long the stock ... good stuff later ... cheers