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IRAQ: UN Resolution Sought to Protect Treasures
By Julio Godoy
PARIS, Apr 17 (IPS) - Leading archaeologists and cultural historians urged the
United Nations Security Council Thursday to pass a resolution against trade in
art and historical treasures stolen from Iraqi museums.
The experts issued a joint declaration after a meeting at the UNESCO (United
Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation) headquarters in Paris
to demand a temporary international embargo on acquisition of Iraqi cultural
objects. The declaration followed a proposal by UNESCO director-general
Koichiro Matsuura.
"An immediate ban must be adopted on the export of all antiques, antiquities,
works of art, books, and archives from Iraq," the experts said in their declaration.
They also urged "the (military) forces in place to immediately secure all
museums, libraries, archives, monuments and sites in Iraq."
Matsuura said a Security Council resolution proposed to UN Secretary-
General Kofi Annan would hold for all 191 members of the organisation. A
UNESCO convention that prohibits illicit trade in cultural goods has been signed
only by 97 countries.
Matsuura called also for the creation of a "heritage police" within Iraq to
preserve cultural sites and institutions.
Matsuura said he would shortly send a fact-finding mission to Iraq to assess
the extent of the losses. A database would also be compiled to help customs
and police authorities, art dealers, museums and collectors to identify the status
of a particular object.
The experts admitted at the meeting, however, that their influence on any trade
in Iraqi antiquities would be limited.
"We have heard that some pieces stolen from Baghdad in recent days may
already have surfaced this week in the international art market in Paris, in Iran
and elsewhere in Europe," Michael Petzet, president of the International Council
on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) told IPS.
Petzet said it was shocking that the war would give "the art international mafia
a chance to trade in antiquities and art objects worth millions of dollars." The
failure of the U.S. military authorities to protect the National Museum of Baghdad
was "a crime against humanity," he reiterated.
Leading international archaeologists had warned the U.S.-British military
coalition of the dangers to these treasures well before the war began, Petzet
said. He is among the 30 experts UNESCO invited to evaluate the situation after
the looting of the National Museum of Baghdad and museums in Mosul.
McGuire Gibson, archaeologist at the University of Chicago, and president of
the U.S. Association for Research in Baghdad said at a press conference after
the meeting that some of those who pillaged the National Museum belonged to
well-organised bands of antiquities dealers.
"The looting was partially a deliberate, planned action,'' said Gibson. "The
looters were able to take keys for vaults and were able to take out important
Mesopotamian materials kept in safes. I have a suspicion it was organised
outside the country, in fact I'm pretty sure it was."
Iraqi archaeologists shared the suspicion. The French newspaper Le Figaro
quoted Muhssein Kazum, an archaeologist at the National Museum of Baghdad,
as saying: "Among the looters were some well-dressed people who gave
orders. They knew exactly what they wanted to take, as if they had it all
prepared. Their followers had tools for cutting and removing."
Gibson said the U.S. had a clear responsibility in preventing the pillage. "The
Iraqi ministry of information is only two hundred metres away from the National
Museum of Baghdad," Gibson said. "When I heard that the U.S. troops had
taken the ministry of information, I thought, they will also occupy the museum,
and protect it."
U.S. soldiers watched the pillaging without intervening. Military authorities in
Baghdad ordered protection of the museum only days after the looters had
emptied it.
Gibson and Petzet say it will be difficult to make an inventory of the damage.
Outside experts had little access to the Iraqi heritage, Petzet said.
But some losses stand out. Gibson said he could confirm the disappearance of
a whole collection of clay tablets, about 4,000 years old, the first written
testimonies about Babylon and Sumeria. "These tablets are gone," Gibson said.
Gibson said international police action to track stolen Iraqi treasures could be
supported by archaeologists and experts who have photographed the treasures
or drawn sketches of the most important testimonies of the Babylonian,
Sumerian, and Assyrian culture. But little such material is available.
"All we have is occasional telephone calls with colleagues in Baghdad and
elsewhere in Iraq," Petzet said. But he said "it is clear that the Iraqi heritage is
suffering not only from the pillaging, but also from the lack of conservation. We
ought to send a crew of conservationists to Iraq, and provide Iraqi colleagues
with money and other means to begin with the restoration."
Matsuura backed proposals for such an aid campaign. He said there was
urgent need to repair the antiquities that remain, as it was to keep them from the
hands of art thieves. (END/2003)
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