Thabo Mbeki, the president of South Africa, will deliver the keynote address at the November 2004 Antwerp Diamond Conference.

The conference will examine the issue of consumer confidence in natural diamonds—particularly the marketing, legal, and scientific issues surrounding gem-quality synthetics.

Mbeki isn’t the first world leader to visit the Conference. Festus Mogae, the president of Botswana, and former U.S. Vice President Al Gore visited in 2002, and former President Bill Clinton spoke in 2003.