An approach to the mutual separation of chemically similar metal Ions using chelate extraction is shown on the basis of HSAB rule. The critical separation condition for In-III and Ga-III was obtained by the S-B - sigma(B) diagram, where S-B and sigma(B) are the proposed HSAB parameters for a chelating agent. This concept was successfully applied to the design of mutual separation scheme of Cd-II and Zn-II using synergistic extraction.