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Italy told to return Ethiopian loot

2001-06-16 19:38
line

Addis Ababa - Two university professors have written an open letter to new Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi to demand the long-delayed return of the Axum Obelisk, which was looted by the army of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini in 1937.

"We feel the time has come, under your Excellency's leadership, to redeem Italy's reputation by honouring treaty obligations without further delay," Richard Pankhurst of Britain and Ethiopian Endreas Eshete wrote in the letter, a copy of which was sent to AFP late on Friday.

The 160-tonne funerary monument was to have been returned by the Italian government within 18 months of Italy signing the September 1947 peace treaty with the United Nations that officially ended World War II.

The return of the 24-metre granite stela - one of six erected at Axum when Ethiopia embraced Christianity under the Emperor Ezana in the fourth century - was also agreed in a bilateral accord signed in 1997.

The obelisk has stood in Rome's Piazza di Porta Capena, outside the headquarters of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, for more than 60 years.

Pankuhurst and Eshete, members of Ethiopia's National Coordinating Committee for the Return of the Axum Obelisk, added: "We cannot believe that the Italian people want to retain an obelisk which was erected in Rome to commemorate the 15th anniversary of Mussolini's seizure of power and which in Rome symbolises the fascist regime in both Italy and Ethiopia."

Ethiopia was occupied by fascist Italy from 1936 until 1941.

Addis Ababa has also been waiting for six decades for Italy to return a significant portion of its pre-war national archives and the country's first aeroplane, the Tsehai, named after the daughter of the country's last monarch, Emperor Haile Selassie.- Sapa-AFP

- SAPA

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