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An
Iraqi man collects books from the destroyed Iraqi National Library
in Baghdad
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BAGHDAD,
April 18 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - Iraqi leading
archeologists charged the U.S. occupation forces Friday, April 18, of
perpetrating the cultural "crime of the century" by failing to
protect priceless Iraqi artifacts from looters and trampling
archeological sites during their invasion of the country.
They
also said a small number of "valuable" missing museum pieces
were returned after appeals by Muslim religious leaders, but denied
reports from a U.N. conference that Iraqi officials may have been
involved in an organized theft, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).
"With
what I'm expecting has happened in the (archeological) sites in the
field and what happened to the Iraq museum, I would say it's the crime
of the century because it is really affecting the heritage of
mankind," said the head of the National Archaeological Museum in
Baghdad, Donny George.
"It
looks like there was an action and there were other priorities (for the
United States) besides the Baghdad Museum," George told reporters
at a briefing about the firestorm over last Friday's ransacking of the
museum.
U.S.
troops who captured
the Iraqi capital on April 9 watched as looters carted away artifacts
from some of the world's oldest civilizations.
Under
pressure after the museum looting, the United States is sending FBI
agents to the Iraqi capital to help with the recovery effort.
But
the head of President US George W. Bush's
cultural advisory committee has already stepped down in protest at the American failure to
prevent the "tragedy."
Jaber
Khalil Ibrahim, head of Iraq's General Directorate of Antiquities, said
the U.S. and British governments should make amends by preventing any of
the antiquities from leaving the country and "look for the objects
that will pop up in Switzerland, England, America, Israel and Japan and
send them back."
Ibrahim
agreed with an assessment by a UNESCO conference of experts called
Thursday, April 17, in Paris to examine the war damage to Iraq's
heritage that organized gangs which traffic in works of ancient art were
involved in the thefts.
He
noted that some of the pieces, such as a 5,000-year-old Sumerian
alabaster vase -- known as the Warka vase, which weighs 300 kilograms
(660 pounds) -- would need several people to be have been removed.
In
the gallery, the only items left were ones too heavy to carry, he added.
"I
suspect they really did (know what they were looking for) and that they
were especially looking for Sumerian valuable material," Ibrahim
said.
But
he denied reports from the UNESCO meeting which described some of the
looters as directed by well-dressed men who had keys to the vaults where
they believed the most highly valued items were kept.
He
added that "about 20 valuable glazed pottery and some metal"
objects were returned in the morning to neighborhood mosques following
appeals by imams.
"They
said it was their culture which made them bring these things back,"
Ibrahim asserted.
The
Iraqi officials confirmed that the major thefts included the Warka vase,
also known as the Vase of Uruk, and an Akkadian bronze statue of
Basitki.
A
famed 4,000-year-old Sumerian Ur harp was stripped of its gold and badly
damaged.
A
collection of some 80,000 cuneiform tablets with examples of the some of
the world's earliest writing was also taken, and a number of Roman
statues were smashed and their heads are missing.
The
officials said a final assessment of the losses would take "days
and days" since the area, like many parts of the city, is still
without power.
looters
destroyed the National Archives Centre in Baghdad and burned
the National Library burned. A museum in the northern city of Mosul was also looted.
A
library of Glorious Qur'an in the religious endowments ministry was set
on fire and a collection of 20th century Iraqi figurative art collected
by the Gulbenkian museum was destroyed.
Eye-witnesses
have described some of the looters as being directed by well-dressed men
who knew what they wanted to take.
Gibson
said those organizers had keys to the vaults where they believed the
most valued items were kept.
According
to Neil MacGregor, director of the British Museum in London, some of the
most important treasures were relocated in the Iraqi National Bank
before the U.S.-British invasion
on March 20.
"You
could have 300 or 400 people working on just one site," according
to Gibson, who said the gang leaders were based abroad and passed orders
back to agents in Iraq. These then directed the illegal diggings and
smuggled the artifacts out.
Three
days after the looting in Baghdad, there were reports that art dealers
in Paris and other European cities had already been contacted with
offers of stolen items, Gibson said.
