British Museum demands action on Iraqi treasures

LONDON (AFP) Apr 15, 2003
The British Museum said Tuesday it was ready to send a team of conservation experts to Iraq, as it called for swift action to rescue ancient treasures looted amid the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime.

"Although we still await precise information, it is clear that a catastrophe has befallen the cultural heritage of Iraq," said Neil MacGregor, director of the world-famous museum.

"We hope that the British government and the international community can move quickly to take the steps necessary to avoid further damage and to prepare the way for recovering objects looted, and for conserving those that can still be restored."

Top officials from the British Museum are to attend a meeting of the Paris-based UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) on Thursday to discuss a plan of action for the protection and restoration of the treasures.

"There will be a large conservation task to be done, extending over many years and requiring the widest possible international cooperation," MacGregor said.

"We hope that, under the aegis of UNESCO, an international team of expert curators and conservators, experienced in handling antiquities of this sort, can be put together, so that they can provide the help our Iraqi colleagues decide they need once civil order is restored."

The British Museum boasts the greatest collection of Mesopotamian antiquities outside Iraq.

A spokesman for the museum confirmed that the institution was keen to send conservators and archaeologists to Iraq as soon it is safe to do so.

UNESCO said it intended to send a team to the war-ravaged country.

Looters in Baghdad have taken some 170,000 items of antiquity, dating back thousands of years, from the Iraqi capital's main museum.

Another museum in Mosul, in nothern Iraq, has also been stripped and its Islamic library, housing one of the oldest surviving copies of the Koran, ravaged by fire.

Iraq, known in ancient times as Mesopotamia, is considered the "cradle of civilisation", with thousands of archaeological sites dating back up to 10,000 years.

International Development Minister Clare Short, briefing foreign correspondents in London on Tuesday, said the looting of museum artifacts in Iraq was "a tragedy, and obviously not just for Iraq."

"These artefacts are like the history of humanity... The whole of humanity needs to come together to try and restore these artefacts as much as can be done," she said.

In Baghdad, said Short, the looting "had an edge of a kind of violence and craziness that was beyond normal expectations, and it was shocking that a museum, that didn't in any way celebrate the regime, should be destroyed."

SPACE.WIRE