Cairo - Egypt announced Wednesday that it was suspending its ties with the Louvre museum in Paris in a row over allegdly stolen ancient antiquities. A statement from the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) in Cairo complained the world-famous museum in France was "refusing to return stolen Pharaonic antiquities."
The dispute centres on four paintings which the SCA says were stolen in the 1980s from a tomb in the Egyptian city of Luxor.
The SCA said the Louvre was not abiding by the regulations issued by the SCA in 2002 which state that all museums must return stolen antiquities and not buy pieces proven to be stolen.
A lecture by former Louvre expert on Egypt Christiane Ziegler has been cancelled, because she was responsible for exhibiting the pieces at the museum last year, the statement added.
Egypt has launched a major campaign in recent years to retrieve antiquities that had been illegally smuggled out of the country and displayed abroad. It has succeeded in bringing back thousands of pieces from different countries.
There are around 5,000 works of art and everyday objects spanning 4,000 years of Egyptian civilization displayed at the Louvre, many of them acquired during British colonial rule of Egypt.
In 2007, French authorities returned to Egypt locks of 3,200-year-old hair from the pharaoh Ramses II that were stolen 30 years ago in France and were put up for sale on the internet.
