The European Union on Wednesday agreed an outline deal on a law to clean up the commodities supply chain, so importers will have to carry out checks to stem the use of gold and other metals from conflict zones, European politicians said...."This deal is a breakthrough," said Dutch Green Member of the European Parliament Judith Sargentini, who was involved in the negotiations. She added it was "only a partial response", but welcomed a commitment for a review to assess progress. The EU rules will cover conflict minerals from anywhere in the world, meaning they go further in geographic scope than U.S. Dodd-Frank legislation finalised in 2012. The U.S. law insists on scrutiny of imports of tin, tungsten, tantalum and gold from the Democratic Republic of the Congo and nine neighboring countries as raw materials and when used in products such as mobile phones, electrical goods and cars. The EU regulation focuses on imports of the commodities used to make them, in line with the European Commission's original proposal, but not with demands from the European Parliament to cover the "upstream" or finished products...