"The United States will be working with a number of individuals and organizations to not only secure the facility, but to recover that which has been taken and also to participate in restoring that which has been broken," Powell said.

"The United States understands its obligations and will be taking a leading role with respect to antiquities in general, but this museum in particular," he told reporters at the State Department.

Powell, who called the facility "one of the great museums in the world," said he had spoken earlier Monday with Greek Foreign Minister George Papandreou, whose country holds the rotating presidency of the European Union, about possible ways to protect Iraq's cultural heritage.

In addition, he said US officials had been in touch with the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) to explore steps that could be taken.

UNESCO's chief, Koichiro Matsuura, on Saturday called on US and British authorities to immediately protect Iraq's cultural heritage by monitoring and guarding archeological sites and cultural institutions.

The museums in Baghdad and in the northern city of Mosul should be guarded by the military, Matsuura said, according to a UNESCO statement released in Paris.

The organization also said it had contacted Iraq's neighbors to stop any "illegal export of Iraqi cultural goods."

Iraq's national museum fell victim to looters on Friday in the lawless atmosphere that engulfed Baghdad after the arrival there of US troops on Wednesday.

Pottery artifacts and statues were broken and overturned, while administrative offices were wrecked, according to witnesses.

Iraq, among the earliest cradles of civilization and home to the remains of such ancient Mesopotamian cities as Babylon, Ur and Nineveh, has one of the richest archaeological heritages in the world.

Shortly after the war began on March 20, a group of 18 prominent archaeologists appealed for the US-led coalition to spare Iraq's priceless antiquities.

"The extraordinary significance of the monuments, museums and archaeological sites of Iraq -- ancient Mesopotamia -- imposes an obligation on all peoples and governments to protect them," they said in March 21 open letter published in Science magazine.

They also called on the international community to take a post-war role in assisting in the protection of antiquities from looting and themselves pledged to help Iraqi Department of Antiquities do its job.

Some of the signatories were among a team of scholars to have worked with the Pentagon and the State Department before the war began to identify sites that should be protected.

That team identified about 4,000 sites of significance "not to aid in targeting, but rather to aid in not targeting," said McGuire Gibson, the president of the American Association for Research in Baghdad.

Despite efforts to avoid these sites, Gibson expressed deep concerns that the fall of the Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein would erode the control of cultural watchdogs in the country and spur looting, particularly at the museums in Baghdad and Mosul.

"Even if they survive the bombing, any period of chaos or uncertain control during or after the fighting will render both institutions vulnerable to looting," Gibson said.

SPACE.WIRE