ROME (Reuter) - Italy said Tuesday it would return an
ancient Ethiopian obelisk, seized 60 years ago by Fascist
dictator Benito Mussolini as a war trophy, to its former colony
by the end of this year.
The decision was taken at a meeting between senior Italian
and Ethiopian officials opened by Foreign Minister Lamberto
Dini, who pledged to honor a bilateral accord from 1956 to give
the obelisk back, the ministry said in a statement.
``The Ethiopians expressed deep gratitude for the Italian
desire to seal the renewed Italian-Ethiopian friendship with
such a great gesture,'' the statement said.
The delegation said it would commemorate the return of the
obelisk to Axum with a donation to Italy. The nature of the gift
would be agreed at a later date, the statement said.
The 80-foot obelisk, covered with relief carvings and
believed to be 2,000 years old, once stood in the historic city
of Axum in northern Ethiopia.
It is the second tallest of many obelisks built in ancient
Axum which academics say are the most important examples of
stonecarving and engineering south of Egypt.
Mussolini invaded Ethiopia in 1935. When the capital Addis
Ababa fell a year later, Ethiopia formed part of Italian East
Africa with Eritrea and Italian Somaliland until its liberation
by the World War II Allies in 1941.
Mussolini had the obelisk erected on Oct. 28, 1937, the 15th
anniversary of his March on Rome, in front of the building which
was to have housed his Ministry for an Italian Africa.
The building is now the headquarters of the U.N.'s Food and
Agriculture Organization (FAO).
Italy has been promising to return the obelisk since 1947,
when it made peace with Ethiopia, but the high turnover of
governments -- the current one is the 55th since World War II --
and Ethiopia's reluctance to press Italy, a big aid provider,
have hampered progress on the subject.
The statement said the structural conditions of the obelisk
would be examined and it would be cleaned before taken to an
archaeological site in Axum.
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Million
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