Antiquities OPEC?

TIME (Richard Lacayo)

Greece and Italy have taken a step towards joint action in the smuggle struggle — the fight to regain illegally exported antiquities. (via) Greek Minister of Culture Mihalis Liapis was in Rome this week to meet with his Italian counterpart Sandro Bondi to discuss ways to coordinate efforts for the return of looted work.

For now it's not clear what their joint ventures will amount to. Somewhat garbled press reports mention technical cooperation between Greek and Italian law enforcement. But as more "source nations" reach out to one another to cooperate on this issue, Derek Fincham, on his Illicit Cultural Property blog, is wondering about the eventual possibility of what he calls "an antiquities OPEC". I'm not sure the analogy holds — OPEC is powerful because it sits on top of a natural resource that, at the end of the day, the world requires. Antiquities source nations have.....antiquities.

But as I read Fincham's post this morning I was reminded that last fall, when I was working on a lengthy Time story about the fight over antiquities, Zahi Hawass, the head of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities and one of the most visible figures in this fight, mentioned in an e-mail that he hoped to organize an international meeting of source nations this year. But I haven't seen any further news on that idea.

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