Eighty percent of Arab World Museum in Paris belong to Iran

RICHT Public Relations Office quoted Beheshti as saying that sensitivity towards the issue of Iran’s ownership of historical and cultural objects at the world level not only is important in terms of the material ownership and for their extradition, but also in terms of intellectual property.

Underlining the importance of extradition of the cultural and historical property and objects, he said: 'When we speak of the historical, cultural and arts works, especially tangible movable or immovable ones, each work is valuable from different aspects.'

He Pointed to the presence of a large number of Iranian works in other countries, saying that almost in all the museums of the world there are Iranian objects and sometimes the number of these objects is amazing, for example four thousand pieces of objects from the Persepolis are on display in the world museums.

“Today an honor of the world museums is the possession of historical and cultural works of Iran,” he said.

“We should defend our cultural-historical property and present documents and evidence as far as possible to prove our ownership.” he added.

Stressing that prior to the 1970 Convention proving ownership of cultural and historical objects and their extradition was very hard, Beheshti said the 1970 Convention has somehow turned into a front that has put two groups of producers of cultural and historical works and consumers of these objects in front of each other.

Pointing to the fact that producers of cultural and historical works such as China, Iran and Greece are countries with historical background, the head of the Research Institute of Cultural Heritage and Tourism said the consumers of these works are often young countries and young countries make further efforts to weaken the 1970 Convention.

“We as the owners of these objects are duty-bound to make efforts for the preservation of our property and fortunately there are legal capacities available at international level such as the 1970 Convention to help us.” he said.

“With the extradition of cultural and historical works we will show to the world that our legal system is sensitive towards such issues,” Beheshti said

“If we remain sensitive even in cases in which the Convention does not help us, other cases will come to help us.” he added.

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