Zahi Hawass on the Nefertiti loan issue

http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2007/849/he2.htm
Zahi Hawass is using his occasional Dig Days column on the Al Ahram Weekly website to highlight his views about the refusal of the German government to send the Nefertiti bust on loan to Egypt for the opening of a museum in 2010, on the grounds of its fragility. In the column he outlines his strategy should Germany again reply in the negative to a newly issued request to Bernd Neumann, deputy minister of culture in Berlin, for the return of the bust for a three month period:

I am writing this column to warn the Germans that a refusal by the Berlin Museum
will damage the scientific relationship between Egypt and Berlin. As a result, it will be announced that we are cutting scientific relations with the Berlin Museum and will never send exhibitions to Berlin. . . .

We will file a court case to have the bust of Nefertiti returned to Egypt. We will also ask the directors of antiquities organisations in various countries that have unique artefacts in foreign museums to meet. The countries that we will ask to meet in Cairo to discuss the situation include: Mexico, Syria, Iraq, Turkey, China, Italy, Greece, Palestine and Lebanon. We will make a wish list of the artefacts that we would like returned, and we will go through UNESCO and the media to achieve our aim. I am sure that many people will support us. We are not asking for the return of all Egyptian artefacts, only those stolen objects for which there is conclusive evidence that they were illegally taken out of Egypt and their rightful place is here. With regards to the bust of Nefertiti, there is a just case!

Hawass gives an outline of why he feels that it can be argued that the Nefertiti bust was removed from Egypt illegally, and suggests that the real reason that the German government are unwilling to send the bust on loan is that they are afraid that it will not be returned to Germany at the end of the three months.