Iraq wants Turkey, Iran to help recover looted treasures

Abdul Zahra, a spokesman for the Tourism and Antiquities Ministry, said Minister Qahtan Abbas al-Jibouri had met last week in Baghdad with an Iranian tourism official and the Iranian ambassador to Iraq, Hassan Kazemi-Qomi. Â

 

Iraq wants any information Iran may have on the whereabouts of any antiquities smuggled across Iraq's eastern border, including pieces looted from Iraq's national museum and those dug up from archaeological sites across Iraq, some of which date back as far as ancient Mesopotamian civilization.

 

Zahra said the Jordanian and Syrian government had returned thousands of pieces smuggled out of Iraq, but past requests have not yielded the same results from either Iran or Turkey.

 

"We are waiting for Iran and Turkey to prove their good intentions and lift the doubts," Zahra said. He said Iraq was not accusing Iran of knowingly harboring stolen antiquities.

 

U.S. forces were widely criticized following the U.S.-led invasion of 2003 for failing to prevent the looting of priceless relics from Iraq's national museum.

 

More than 15,000 artefacts went missing from the museum during the looting, about 6,000 of which have been returned. Thousands of other artefacts have been plundered from archaeological sites, Zahra said.