WASHINGTON: As flames engulfed Baghdad’s National Library on Monday, destroying manuscripts many centuries old, the Pentagon admitted that it had been caught unprepared by the widespread looting of antiquities, despite months of warnings from American archaeologists.

But defence department officials denied accusations by British archaeologists that the US government was succumbing to pressure from private collectors in America to allow plundered Iraqi treasures to be traded on the open market.

Almost nothing remains of the library’s archive of tens of thousands of manuscripts, books, and Iraqi newspapers, according to reports from the scene. It joins a list that already includes the capital’s National Museum, one of the world’s most important troves of artefacts from the ancient Sumerian, Babylonian and Assyrian civilizations.

Calling the looting of historical artefacts “a catastrophe for the cultural heritage of Iraq”, Mounir Bouchenaki, a deputy director-general of Unesco, announced an emergency summit of archaeologists in Paris on Thursday.

Some Muslim leaders called on looters to return the property, and there were reports of some items being taken back, primarily to hospitals.

In Washington, Colin Powell, the Secretary of State, said the US “will be working with a number of individuals and organizations to not only secure the facility, but to recover that which has been taken, and also to participate in restoring that which has been broken ... the United States understands its obligations and will be taking a leading role with respect to antiquities in general, but (the museum) in particular.”

A Pentagon official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said no plans had been made to protect antiquities from looters, as opposed to ensuring that historical sites were not caught up in the fighting itself. “I think a lot of the focus was on target lists, identifying these sites and ensuring they weren’t hit,” the official said.

But the official rejected charges in a letter from nine British archaeologists that private collectors were “persuading the Pentagon to relax legislation that protects Iraq’s heritage by prevention of sales abroad”.

The American Council for Cultural Policy, a New York-based coalition of about 60 collectors, dealers and others who lobby to allow trading in treasures stolen in Afghanistan and Iraq, had received “no special treatment,” the official insisted, despite reports that members of the group met with Bush administration representatives in January to argue that a post-Saddam Iraq should have relaxed antiquities laws.

John Henry Merryman, a law professor at Stanford University and a member of the ACCP, said allowing a private trade in the artefacts would better protect them until they could be returned to Iraq at a later date. —Dawn/The Guardian News Service.

AFP adds: UNESCO head Koichiro Matsuura on Tuesday renewed his call for the protection of Iraqi museums, libraries and other cultural sites, ahead of a meeting of experts on the issue this week in Paris.