Message #115415

[Bianca]

Prepared to Fight



In 1970, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, or Unesco, adopted a convention that binds member nations to help restore stolen or illegally exported artifacts when another member requests it.

The convention backs Egypt's claim, says Hawass, who alleges the bust was smuggled out of the country.

``If they won't loan them, we would recover them permanently,'' he says.

Hawass also threatened to impose a ``cultural embargo'' on museums that rebuff his requests. For example, Egypt could bar archaeologists associated with those museums from working in the country or stop lending artifacts to them.

Some experts question Egypt's right to antiquities discovered before 1983, when the government passed a law stipulating that all artifacts belong to the state.

``Certainly there is no legal claim for the Rosetta Stone because it was taken out centuries ago,'' says Salima Ikram, a professor of archaeology at the American University in Cairo.



                                                    ``For Nefertiti, maybe.''