Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.) and Congressman Steven Israel (D-NY) have introduced a resolution, HR 505, recommending that the US renegotiate the return of the Iraqi Jewish Archive so that "the rights of the Iraqi Jewish community in exile are protected" (see Peter Tompa's nose-thumbing CPO "Bipartisan Resolution Condemning Repatriation of the Iraqi Jewish Archive Introduced in the House").
Whatever the outcome, on top of previous incidents of this same type ('Loan Washington your Stuff and Kiss it Goodbye?' Wednesday, 6 June 2012) this is going to have unfortunate knock-on effects in the efforts of the US to co-operate with other countries. The so-called Iraqi Jewish Archive left Iraq under an international agreement that was intended to demonstrate US goodwill and desire to help conserve world heritage. It was intended to be a short-term loan. Once the documents were in the US, there was considerable stalling and delay in discussing the completion of the conservation work and their return. The US agreement to return the borrowed material this year was taken only after a considerable amount of pressure was placed upon them to make good their initial blithe promises. Now this. Observers may well be forgiven for thinking just how secure America's word on anything is, and thinking twice before they loan anything to US collections, or allow US conservators to take part in any project involving foreign material if they cannot be trusted not to attempt to walk off with the material they worked on.
I am left wondering what the position of the International Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works (IIC) is on all this. Surely they should be making their voice heard on the manner in which the agreement under which conservators worked is being overridden by rapacious and attention-seeking US politicians.
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