UN agency calls for urgent protection of cultural sites

The United Nations has issued an urgent plea for Iraq's cultural heritage to be protected from looters and vandalism. A mission from the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), has spent several days travelling around the country. Its members said they were shocked by the state of many key sites. UNESCO's assistant director-general for culture, Professor Mounir Bouchenaki, told a press conference that he was surprised to see that a number of Iraq's ancient archaeological sites were still not being protected by guards or military forces. "We have seen extensive illicit excavations at two sites," he said. "It was the work of dozens of people, a real group of people." He said the site of Issin, which dates back to the second millennium BC, had been destroyed by hundreds of holes dug by looters. There was also no one guarding the ruins of the ancient city of Assur, dating back to the same period, even though it had just been added to UNESCO's World Heritage list. There has been criticism of the coalition forces for failing to stop looters and vandals, particularly at the Baghdad museum, after the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime. It has been reported that the ancient cities of Nineveh, Nimrud and Hatra lost major sculptures and up to 20 archeological sites were pillaged. Prof Bouchenaki, heading the first UNESCO mission to travel outside Baghdad since the end of the war, said a list of important sites requiring protection should be drawn up immediately. "Some are under the protection of the military forces but unfortunately the majority of archaeological sites need very urgent protection," he said. His colleague, Prof Ingolf Thuesen, director of the Carsten Niebuhr Institute for Near Eastern Studies in Denmark, said the looting appeared to be organised. "We are losing very important sites and action has to be taken. It is the responsibility of the coalition forces to secure monuments and sites and that must happen very fast." The mission also included Karl-Heinz Kind from Interpol, which is looking at ways of tracking down the thieves and dealers in stolen artifacts. He said potential marketplaces in Iraq should be investigated while there was still a chance to track down the items before they left the country. Asked about the state of the museum in Baghdad, he said it was now known that 32 stolen items were still missing from the main exhibition hall. However, it was impossible to know how many had been taken from storerooms containing some 170,000 artifacts. UNESCO believes it could take up to six months to determine what is missing. On Thursday, the museum was opened for a few hours to show journalists and diplomats some of the objects that had been recovered, such as the 5,000-year-old Vase of Warka. However, it could be two years before the museum is ready to be opened to the public. Prof Bouchenaki said other collections had also been looted and destroyed, such as the library in Basra in the south and the museum in Mosul in the north. "Our main finding is that we must confirm the situation of Iraq's cultural heritage is disastrous," he said.