Iraqi national museum reopens

The Iraq Museum, the pride of the nation known as the cradle of civilisation, reopened almost six years after its ancient treasures were looted in the chaotic aftermath of the US-led invasion.

With its polished marble floors, glass display cases and freshly painted pale blue walls, the Baghdad museum is again home to a wealth of artefacts, some dating back thousands of years.

Tourism and Antiquities Minister Qahtan Abbas, before an audience of invited guests including Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, said about 6,000 items had so far been returned from inside Iraq, from its neighbours and around the world.

A total of 15,000 statues and other valuable artefacts had been looted in the April 2003 ransacking of the museum, once known as the National Museum, that has been repeatedly forced by conflict to close its doors.

"We want to make our museum a place which will be at the forefront of international museums. There's a long road ahead of us. There are a lot of discoveries still being made at archaeological sites" around Iraq, said Mr Maliki.

He called on archaeologists to help make Iraq "a mecca for research" into the history of mankind.

With the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime, there was massive looting of the museum but also of countless historical sites around Iraq which prides itself as a "cradle of civilisation".

The Iraq Museum last year completed the renovation of its Islamic and Assyrian halls, thanks to a €1 million donation and technical help from Italy.

It is also displaying artefacts from the Sumerian and Babylonian eras.

The achaeological wealth of Iraq, historically known as Mesapotomia, shows some of the first evidence of complex urban life appearing within its borders around 3,000 BC.

Its refurbished halls are now home to a host of spectacular ancient treasures including a huge stone slab featuring the Assyrian god of water, Aya.

Former museum director Donny George has accused the US occupation forces of committing "the crime of the century" by standing by and watching the ransacking and looting of the museum that went on for several days.

Looters smashed numerous antiquities, including a terracotta lion dating from the early second millennium BC, and they beheaded statues such as that of Hatra, while more professional thieves selected valuable items for smuggling.

Antiquities smuggling is a multi-billion-dollar business, said by experts to rank third after drugs and arms.

Apart from looting, which raged among public buildings after Saddam's fall, US tanks blasted a hole in the Assyrian Gate entrance of the National Museum, which generations of Iraqis know from school visits to learn of their history.

The museum is to be opened in a first phase to organised groups of schools, universities and tourists.

Almost 2,500 of the items returned have come from neighbouring Jordan, another 700 from Syria and more than 1,000 from the US, the Antiquities Minister said.

Mr Abbas rejected criticism, including from Iraq's own culture ministry that the museum was being reopened too hastily, before adequate security was in place and proper cataloguing of the returned items.

"All those who doubted the capacity of the Iraqis to reopen their museum are invited to come and see," said Mr Abbas, whose government is keen to show life is slowly returning to normal in war-battered Iraq despite an ongoing insurgency.

The Iraqi museum is the "only museum in the world that has the history and culture of mankind in one spot," according to Mr George, who moved to New York after the looting.