/ 18 June 2001

GIVE US BACK OUR OBELISK

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. 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. – AFP