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IRAQ: Librarian Left Out of Visit to Libraries
By Julio Godoy
PARIS, May 27 (IPS) - A UNESCO team had to leave a senior librarian out of a
visit to Iraq this month because U.S. occupying forces denied him a visa.
Jean-Marie Arnoult from the Bibliotheque National de France, the national library
located in Paris, had been included in the UNESCO (United nations Educational,
Scientific and Cultural organisation) team that visited Baghdad earlier this month.
He was denied a visa because he is French, and because France had opposed
the war on Iraq, a leading expert told IPS.
The team went ahead with its inspection of libraries and archives without the
expert they had enlisted to help them.
Ross Shimon, general secretary of the International Federation of Library
Associations and Institutions (IFLA) condemned the U.S. decision. He has called
on the international library and information community to expose this "scandalous
state of affairs".
Among the few that responded to his call is the Chartered Institute of Library
and Information Professionals (CILIP). "The CILIP condemns the refusal of Mr
Arnoult's visa in the strongest possible terms," director of the institute Jill Martin
told IPS.
"UNESCO's initiative to bring about cultural reconstruction in Iraq is of global
importance, and the rebuilding and restocking of libraries is a vital part of this
work," Martin said. "To have a professional librarian as part of the expert team is
essential in order to carry this out effectively."
UNESCO representatives and French officials declined to comment on Arnoult's
exclusion from the Iraq mission. Other independent experts spoke only on
condition of anonymity.
"The U.S. decision is highly regrettable," an official at a Paris-based
international association of cultural institutions told IPS. Nobody wants to criticise
the U.S. ban on Arnoult openly because everybody wants to maintain a good
working relationship with the occupation forces in Iraq, he said.
"What is important now is to have a mission of experts travelling regularly to Iraq
to assess the damage done by the war and the pillage to Iraqi cultural treasures,"
he said. "Therefore nobody wants to quarrel with the U.S., even if this indifference
towards the injustice done to Arnoult is intolerable."
The U.S. occupying forces continue to place restrictions on independent
experts, according to experts who returned from Baghdad. Archaeologists and
journalists have been denied access to important sites, they said.
"The UNESCO mission that visited Iraq this month could only work in Baghdad,
and was not allowed to visit sites located in the countryside," a member of the
mission told IPS.
But despite these restrictions, the UNESCO mission released its first evaluation
last week of the damage done to Iraqi treasures.
According to this first evaluation, up to 3,000 objects are missing from the
National Museum in Baghdad. The National Library's entire collection may have
been lost.
Mounir Bouchenaki, assistant director-general for culture at UNESCO and a
member of the mission that visited Baghdad, called the destruction of the Iraqi
treasures and of the collection in the library "a major cultural disaster."
Bouchenaki accused the U.S. authorities of underplaying the damage caused by
war and the pillage. He said in a statement on his return that U.S. claims that less
than 25 Iraqi objects had been lost was "a distortion of reality."
Bouchenaki said an exhaustive inventory of Iraqi treasures would have to be
made to give "a real figure for the losses." He said the extent of damage was
appalling.
"We have still not talked about the losses at the important Museum of Fine
Arts," Bouchenaki said. "And the losses at the National Library are a real disaster.
The library is gone."
Bouchenaki said many Iraqi treasures looted are being offered for sale on the
Internet, and on the international market for arts and antiquities.
Only a handful of major treasures and some 200 small objects have been
traced, or returned by the looters, he said. (END/2003)
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