Leading diamond industry organisations including WFDB, IDMA, CIBJO and others expressed their strong and unequivocal support for the World Diamond Council's (WDC) mission and its leadership position in the struggle against conflict diamonds following a meeting on the eve of the inaugural World Diamond Conference in Delhi.

The statement issued after the meeting said, “In response to the various reports in the media about the WDC, we wish to reiterate that we value the role the WDC plays in the Kimberley Process (KP) and, by extension, the meaningful role of the KP in the global diamond industry and trade. We therefore call attention to the WDC's mission statement and reconfirm and pledge our continuous full support to the WDC and its objectives."

It also reiterated the WDC mission statement which says: "The primary objective of the WDC is to represent the diamond industry in the development and implementation of regulatory and voluntary systems to control the trade in diamonds embargoed by the United Nations or covered by the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme."

Among the meeting's participants were Ernest Blom, President of World Federation of Diamond Bourses; Edward Asscher, President of the World Diamond Council, WDC; Ronnie VanderLinden, Secretary General of the International Diamond Manufacturers Association (IDMA) and Gaetano Cavalieri, President of CIBJO, the World Jewellery Confederation.