Two quit to protest loss of Iraqi
treasures
PREVENTABLE DESTRUCTION'
Two quit to protest loss of Iraqi
treasures
By Paul Richard, Washington Post, 4/18/2003
ASHINGTON -- Citing ''the wanton and preventable
destruction'' of Iraq's National Museum of Antiquities, the
chairman of the President's Advisory Committee on Cultural
Property has submitted his resignation to President Bush.
Another of the committee's nine members is also resigning
over the issue.
''While our military
forces have
displayed
extraordinary
precision and
restraint in
deploying arms --
and apparently in
securing the Oil
Ministry and oil
fields -- they have
been nothing short
of impotent in
failing to attend to
the protection of
[Iraq's] cultural heritage,'' Martin Sullivan wrote in the
resignation letter that he sent Monday to the White House.
Sullivan, 59, has been chairman of the advisory committee
since 1995. The committee seeks to harmonize US import
regulations with the export restrictions of nations seeking to
protect their cultural patrimony. Acknowledging that his
successor would soon be named, Sullivan wrote, ''From a
practical perspective my resignation is simply symbolic.''
''The tragedy was foreseeable and preventable,'' wrote Sullivan,
who is also executive director of Historic St. Mary's City
Commission in Maryland. ''The tragedy was not prevented, due
to our nation's inaction.''
Asked about the looting of antiquities
at his press briefing Tuesday,
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld
said: ''No one likes it. No one allows
it. It happens, and it's unfortunate. . .
. The United States is concerned
about the museum in Baghdad, and
the president and the secretary of
state and I have all talked about it,
and we are in the process of offering
rewards for people who will bring
things back or to assist us in finding
where those things might be.''
The second committee resignation
came from Gary Vikan, director of the
Walters Art Museum in Baltimore,
who called his action ''similarly
symbolic.''
Armies have been marching through
the Fertile Crescent for several
millennia, and Baghdad has been
sacked before. ''But it hasn't been
this bad for 700 years,'' said Vikan.
When the Mongols attacked in 1258
they put to the sword most of the
city's inhabitants. It is said that so
many manuscripts from Baghdad's
unequaled libraries were hurled into
the Tigris that the river ran black
with ink.
Many provincial museums and Iraqi
archeological sites were also looted
during the 1991 Gulf War.
With this history in mind, Richard
Moe, president of the National Trust
for Historic Preservation, wrote to
Secretary of State Colin Powell to
urge the United States to ''safeguard''
the ''collection of the National
Museum of Iraq.''
Wednesday, on behalf of the National
Trust, Moe wrote again, this time to
Rumsfeld, to ''strongly urge the
Coalition Forces to take full
responsibility for safeguarding Iraq's
remaining museum collections and
monuments.''
''Officials at UNESCO estimate that
about 150,000 items, with a total
value in the billions of dollars,
[already] have been taken,'' Moe
wrote. ''Losses include 4,000-year-old
Sumerian gold jewelry,
5,000-year-old tablets with some of
the world's earliest known writing,
and thousands of other objects.''
The United Nations cultural
organization, UNESCO, was
convening a meeting of European and
American antiquities experts
yesterday in Paris to discuss the
losses. UNESCO is also sending a
team to Baghdad to assess the
damage. Meanwhile, an anonymous
British benefactor has agreed to pay
for six conservators and three
curators to start work restoring
damaged artifacts as soon as it is
safe.
This story ran on page A24 of the Boston Globe on 4/18/2003.
© Copyright 2003 Globe Newspaper Company. |
