Ethiopia wants monument back
2002-01-09 15:58
Abebe Andualem
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia - Ethiopia demanded on Wednesday that Italy make good on an agreement
to return the 1 000-year-old Obelisk of Axum, a government-owned
newspaper reported.
"The Ethiopian peoples' patience ... is being tested to the
limit and it's wearing thin," the culture ministry was quoted as
saying in The Ethiopian Herald. "Ethiopia wants those agreements to
be implemented."
According to the Herald, last month Italian culture ministry
official Vittorio Sgarbi told the Italian news agency ANSA he would
resign if the obelisk were returned to Ethiopia.
It was not the first time Sgarbi had voiced opposition to the
return of the obelisk was sawed up and taken out of Ethiopia in the
1937 after the Italian army invaded and occupied the nation in the
Horn of Africa.
In July, he said the obelisk, which stands in a plaza in Rome
near the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, had been in Italy
so long it was practically a naturalised Italian. He said it would
be nearly impossible to correctly dismantle it for shipping since
it had been put back together in Italy.
Money earmarked
Instead, the $1.6 million earmarked for transporting the
obelisk could be spent restoring monuments already in Ethiopia, he
said.
The comment created an uproar in Ethiopia, where officials have
been trying for decades to get back the monument Fascist dictator
Benito Mussolini hauled off to Italy as war booty.
The obelisk is a towering stele carved from stone. The steles
were erected in the northern town of Axum beginning in the 4th
century, and Ethiopians consider them vital to their cultural
heritage.
Italy agreed to send the obelisk back as recently as 1998, but
the 2 1/2-year border war between Ethiopia and Eritrea that broke
out in May 1998 put those plans on hold.
Italy's former left-centre government said in December 2000,
when the border conflict formally ended, that the obelisk would be
returned the following year.
But that government was replaced by the centre-right government
of Premier Silvio Berlusconi, whose coalition includes the
once-fascist National Alliance party.
Sgarbi has denied his reluctance to return the obelisk has
anything to do with ideology or politics, saying it is solely based
on his concern for the safety of the monument. - Sapa-AP
- SAPA