KABUL, Oct 14: Paris’s Guimet Museum of Asian art will in December become the first international museum to exhibit ancient Afghan treasures that resurfaced three years ago, after fears they had been lost to the world.

More than 120 pieces, including from the 2,000-year-old Bactrian collection, will go on display early December, the Guimet Museum director Jean-Francois Jarrige said in the Afghan capital on Saturday.

Most had already left and been unpacked with the remainder due to fly out on Sunday, he said.

The Afghan parliament voted in May against an international tour of the pieces, saying they feared the treasure would be stolen, lost, damaged or copied. The parliament gave the green light in a new vote months later.

“Eventually, the Afghan government, the minister of culture and ourselves insisted on the importance of this exhibition at this time,” Jarrige said.

The Afghan government has received requests to show the relics from museums in Austria, Denmark, France, Germany, Kazakhstan, the Netherlands, South Korea and the United States.

President Hamid Karzai had wanted France to be the first country to show the items because of the strong archaeological relationship between the nations that started with the arrival of the first French archaeological team here in 1922, the director said.

The Bactrian Treasure, stored in bank vaults in the presidential palace, comprises 21,600 pieces — more than 20,000 of them in gold, including figurines of beasts, jewellery and gem-encrusted scabbards.—AFP