JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – A looming new crisis in the Central African Republic (CAR) has prompted a call for an assessment of mining contracts and a review of the diamond supply chain.

The Central Africa International Crisis Group warns in a document just released to Mining Weekly Online that CAR is facing new problems that could scuttle the already fragile transition to formal government.

“The situation is not pretty,” says Central Africa International Crisis Group project director Thierry Vircoulon, who pays frequent resources-related visits to South Africa, the last on Kimberley Process business.

Should the transition fail, the crisis group asserts that the troubled country, located in the heart of the African continent, would be ungovernable.

As one of a long list of proposals, it recommends that the African Development Bank be allowed to assess the mining and oil contracts that the former regime signed, to determine if these meet the sector’s standards.

It also wants mandatory administrative controls restored to ensure the integrity of the diamonds supply chain and a Kimberley Process review mission organised in all diamond-producing areas to investigate the diamond smuggling networks in CAR.

The Seleka rebels took over Bangui, CAR’s capital, in March during an attack that claimed the lives of several South African soldiers.

Now strife within the Seleka rebel coalition, the proliferation of weapons in Bangui and the deterioration of the social environment are threatening a country that is already a haven for armed groups.

State collapse would pave the way for new criminal networks to undermine regional stability still further.

To prevent decline, the crisis group is urging the country’s international partners to move beyond “wait-and-see”, as the fragile new government is hopelessly short of capacity to secure the country, organise elections, restore public services and implement judicial, economic and social reforms.

The coup by the Seleka rebel coalition in March ended François Bozizé’s decade-long rule.