Annex 6
Letter from Lord Renfrew of Kairmsthorn
to the Rt Hon Tessa Jowell MP,
the Secretary of State for Culture,
Media and Sport, dated 12 May 2003
PROTECTION OF
IRAQ'S
NATIONAL HERITAGE
Thank you very much for your helpful letter
of 5 May which has been forwarded to me in Athens. I am asking
my secretary in Cambridge to send this reply on to you.
It is indeed helpful that Sir Neil MacGregor
and colleagues at the British Museum are working with international
colleagues to encourage a co-ordinated response to the unfortunate
looting of the Iraqi National Museum in Baghdad.
May I first welcome in particular the two last
paragraphs of your letter, in which you express the Government's
intention to ensure that the element of legal protection for Iraqi
antiquities currently provided by the existing UN sanctions Will
remain in place when those more general sanctions are lifted.
It is extremely helpful that the Government supports the UNESCO
statement of 29 April on that subject.
This is a welcome and constructive statement
of the Government's intentions in this matter. and we shall look
forward to seeing how the matter is handled in the course of the
discussions on the lifting of the existing sanctions which are
now beginning at the UN Security Council.
I note in your second paragraph that the MOD
did consult with the archaeological community before the conflict
started, and recall that in your speech on April 29 at the British
Museum you stated that these consultations had taken place with
persons from the University of Newcastle and University College
London. I am not aware of any individuals with specialist knowledge
of Iraqi antiquities currently at the University of Newcastle,
nor have I been able to identify which specialist at University
College, London was involved in such consultations. When the history
of these unfortunate events comes to be written these matters
will perhaps be clarified, and the lack of any direct consultations
between Government representatives and the officials of the British
School of Archaeology at Iraq who had taken a number of steps
to contact them may be explained. The apparent failure to respond
to such approaches, including my own letter to the Prime Minister
of 11 February, remains a matter for concern and puzzlement.
Allow me, however, to end on a positive note,
and to say how much the archaeological community do welcome the
measures which you yourself have taken since those unfortunate
events, and to stress the importance which will be attached to
the assurances given in the last two paragraphs of your letter.
11 September 2003
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