The withdrawal was demanded by the Kimberly Process, a global watchdog established in 2003 to monitor the trade in so-called conflict diamonds that armed groups involved in Africa's perpetual wars use to buy weapons.

Without the certification of that organization, which is supported by 70 diamond-producing countries, Zimbabwe, driven to bankruptcy by President Robert Mugabe's excesses, would not be allowed to deal in diamonds on the international market.

That would cut off one of his few remaining sources of patronage for his military, which keeps him in power.

The crackdown stemmed from allegations by the New York-based Human Rights Watch that Mugabe's troops had killed at least 200 miners at the Marange fields since they took over there in October 2008.

Kimberly investigators have accused the Zimbabwe military of running illegal syndicates that smuggle Marange diamonds into Mozambique; Mugabe's government blames "rogue elements."

His widely reviled regime in Harare, Zimbabwe's capital, narrowly avoided being banned by the Kimberly Process earlier this month despite demands that the country be suspended from the diamond trade because of "unacceptable and horrific violence against civilians by the authorities" at Marange.

Instead, Kimberly gave Mugabe until June 2010 to introduce reforms to comply with global regulations, despite the recommendation of its own investigators that Harare should be suspended for six months.

But Mugabe, widely accused of grave and persistent human rights abuses, supposedly withdrew his forces from Marange four months ago.

He allowed his security forces to take over the diamond fields in 2008 in an apparent bid to prevent the collapse of his regime.

Mugabe, the guerrilla hero who drove out the ruling white minority from the former British colony of Rhodesia in the 1970s to become president in 1980, needed the funds from illegal diamond sales to buy the loyalty of his 25,000-strong army to stay in power.

The persistent violence at Marange is emblematic of the resource wars that are ravaging Africa, most notably the seemingly endless multistate conflict in the mineral-rich Democratic Republic of Congo that erupted in 1998 and has killed some 5 million civilians.

The steadily dwindling resources across the planet are widely expected to be the main trigger for conflict in the decades ahead.

The dramatic upsurge in demand for the mineral wealth locked in Africa's soil by China and India, the world's most expanding economies, has only intensified the peril.

The Marange takeover came as Mugabe, whose one-man rule has driven once-prosperous Zimbabwe into political turmoil, faced international opprobrium for a brutal crackdown against his political opponents.

He was forced to accede to forming a unity government with his main rival. He wanted to secure $10 billion in international aid and donor states insisted he make wide-ranging reforms. These have been slow in coming and the unity effort is foundering.

In June, Human Rights Watch accused Zimbabwe's military of using revenues from illicit diamond sales, smuggled out or illegally sold through the Reserve Bank.

It said that troops had massacred more than 200 miners in one three-week period in 2008 and buried the bodies in mass graves, while forcing villagers, including children, to work in the mines.

"Millions of dollars in potential government revenue are being siphoned off through illegal diamond mining," the group reported.

The Harare government denied any killings had taken place. But in late June, a delegation from the Kimberly Process reported after visiting Marange that the government had carried out "horrific violence against civilians."

Earlier, the World Federation of Diamond Bourses had also recommended to its members in 20 countries not to trade diamonds from the Marange fields because of the alleged abuses by Mugabe's military.

In July, he agreed to pull out the army from Marange, but that does not appear to have happened.

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