USA: United States joins outcry over Afghan statues
(March 5, 2001, Reuters) WASHINGTON - The United States joined the international
outcry Monday against the destruction of Buddhist statues by the Taliban rulers of Afghanistan. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said the ancient statues of the Buddha at Bamiyan in central Afghanistan were ``an important part of the world's cultural legacy and the cultural heritage of Afghanistan.''
``The United States joins ... other governments in urging a halt to the destruction by the Taliban of a significant aspect of Afghan's cultural heritage,'' he added.
New York's Metropolitan makes Afghan art offer
NEW YORK, March 1 (Reuters) - The director of New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art on Thursday begged the Taliban not to smash all the statues from Afghanistan's rich cultural past and said the museum would purchase the artifacts rather than see them destroyed. "We are making this offer. Let us come at our own cost and let us remove what we are able to remove," said Phillippe De Montebello, director of the
Metropolitan Museum, one of the world's premier repositories of art and artifacts.
"Let us remove them so that they are in the context of an art museum, where they are cultural objects, works of art and not cult images," he told Reuters in a telephone interview.
"Better that than having them destroyed."
De Montebello was joining his voice to the chorus of international appeals to the radical ruling Taliban movement that has begun smashing the statues it regards as un-Islamic.
U.S. museums interested in plan to save Afghan art
Fri, 2 Mar 2001 18:24:39 EST
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Major U.S. museums said Friday they would join any effort to save Afghanistan's art a day after New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art offered, at its own cost, to rescue ancient statues from destruction by the Taliban.
The Metropolitan Museum's director, Phillipe De Montebello, said Thursday the museum would be willing to buy and retrieve statues of a reasonable size and put them in a secularenvironment "where they are cultural objects, works of art and not cult images."
"I think the Met would be the leader of any such effort and the rest of us would get in line backing the Met," said James
Cuno, director of the Harvard University Art Museums in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
"We certainly deplore the destruction," said Deborah
Gribbon, director of the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles.
"I would certainly welcome the opportunity to talk with him (De Montebello) and see what he has in mind and see if there is some way Getty can lend its support," she told Reuters.
Gribbon said the museum would be prepared to consider putting its financial resources behind the effort.
Powell deplores damage to Afghan statues
WASHINGTON, March 6 (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell on Tuesday described the damage to ancient Buddha statues in central Afghanistan as a crime and a tragedy.
"It's horrible. It's a tragedy. It's a crime against humankind, and I deplore it," he told a joint news conference with Swedish Foreign Minister Anna
Lindh.