Greece has the right to the Elgin Marbles

Two weeks ago, at the New Acropolis Museum in Athens, due to open early next year, the Presidents of Italy and Greece took part in an historic ceremony (right) that could have major repercussions for Britain. The Italians were handing back to the Greeks a fragment of marble sculpture taken from the Parthenon 200 years ago. The fragment portrays, in exquisite detail, the draped lower leg and foot of a seated goddess, probably Artemis.

It had been removed by the notorious Lord Elgin, the British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire which was occupying Greece at the time. Elgin gave the fragment to the British Consul-General of Sicily and it ended up in the Salinas Museum in Palermo.

Elgin took the bulk of the sculptures back to London where they have been in the British Museum since 1816. Greece has demanded

the return of the so-called 'Elgin marbles' ever since, but to no avail. Now the question is very simple: if the Italians can be magnanimous and give back a treasure that is rightfully the Greeks', why cannot the British follow suit?

While the British Government and the British Museum have constantly prevaricated, the British people - as judged by opinion polls down the years - have felt more relaxed about giving the Elgin marbles back to Greece. One argument British officialdom has constantly used against returning the marbles has been Greece's reported inability to care for its antiquities. But the opening in 2009 of the New Acropolis Museum whose innovative design, the work of Swiss-born architect Bernard Tschumi, offers a sweeping 360-degree view of the Acropolis, surely puts an end to such criticism.

In a Times article dated August 27, the museum was described as "one of the most beautiful exhibition spaces in modern architecture". Eleni Cubitt secretary of the British Committee for the Reunification of