Yellowknife (Feb 17/06) - With two more mines on the horizon, the government admits it has to do a better job negotiating with De Beers than it did with the owners of Ekati and Diavik.

"We've learned a lot from those agreements and that will be applied when we sit down with De Beers," said Industry Minister Brendan Bell.

Even Stephen Kakfwi, who signed the deal with BHP Billiton regarding its Ekati mine in 1996 while he was Resources, Wildlife and Economic Development minister, conceded negotiations could have gone better for the territories.

"We did the best we could at the time," he said. "In hindsight you'd like to clean a lot of things up."

Any future agreements must include price, size and quantity guarantees if the GNWT wants to close the gaps, said Bob Bies, director of Arslanian Cutting Works and a former territorial diamond analyst.