India/US Cultural Property MOU

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After Biden's wooing of Modi, a White House announcement indicates that India will be seeking a cultural property agreement with the US. Among the points agreed (near the bottom)

President Joseph R. Biden, Jr. and Prime Minister Narendra Modi today affirmed a vision of the United States and India as among the closest partners in the world – a partnership of democracies looking into the 21st century with hope, ambition, and confidence. [...]
55. Prime Minister Modi conveyed his deep appreciation for the repatriation of antiquities to India by the United States. Both sides expressed strong interest in working quickly toward a Cultural Property Agreement, which would help to prevent illegal trafficking of cultural property from India and enhance cooperation on the protection and lawful exchange of cultural property.

I guess the US could hardly do anything else since their hopeless 1980s illicit-antiquities measures allowed dealers like Subhash Kapoor to operate from the centre of places like Manhattan under everybody's noses with nothing that could be done to curb their activities. This MOU is several decades too late. Time to change the US soft-power system and stop the trade in illegally procured and smuggled artefacts from everywhere, not just a few selected favoured countries.

Hat tip, Rick St Hilaire.