Athens/London (dpa) – The scandal over the return of art treasures from the British Museum to Greece could harm British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, according to commentators. Media in both countries described Sunak’s last-minute cancellation of a meeting with his Greek colleague Kyriakos Mitsotakis as “shameful”, “childish” and “unprofessional”.
“It was an unfortunate event,” Mitsotakis said Wednesday. But: “This made Greece’s just demand to reunify the Parthenon sculptures even more well-known not only in the UK, but also to the world public.”
Other Greek politicians were much more outraged. The British Times quoted Foreign Minister Giorgos Gerapetritis as saying the withdrawal of the invitation was scandalous. “It is a huge lack of diplomatic tact. Even Israel and Hamas communicate.” The Minister of Economy, Adonis Georgiadis, commented that the demand for the return of the artistic treasures was “the opinion of eleven million Greeks and many millions of people around the world.”
The British Prime Minister, for his part, took aim at Mitsotakis. “It was clear that the purpose of the meeting was not to discuss substantive issues for the future, but rather to distinguish oneself and renegotiate the problems of the past,” Sunak said in Parliament in London. Opposition leader Keir Starmer accused the prime minister of wanting to humiliate the Greek head of government.
Annoyed Prime Minister
Sunak canceled a meeting with Mitsotakis scheduled for Tuesday at short notice. The Prime Minister was apparently upset by a BBC interview in which the Greek had again asked London to return the friezes from the Parthenon temple to the Acropolis. It’s like splitting up the “Mona Lisa” and showing half in the Louvre in Paris and the other half in the British Museum, Mitsotakis says.
Downing Street defended the cancellation, saying that with the interview Mitsotakis had broken an agreement not to address the issue publicly. But Sunak was also criticized within his Conservative Party. Foreign Affairs Committee chairwoman Alicia Kearns said the approach was difficult to understand.
The dispute over ownership of the antiquities has been going on for decades. The Parthenon Temple (“Chamber of the Virgin”) is one of the most famous architectural monuments of ancient Greece. At the beginning of the 19th century, the British diplomat Lord Elgin had the best-preserved marble slabs and sculptures of the Parthenon frieze dismantled and taken to England. There he sold it to the British Museum in 1816. Athens speaks of theft.
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