Senior advisor asks CHTHO to seek resumption of relations with U.S. cultural centers

TEHRAN,Sept.21(MNA) – A senior advisor of Iran’s Cultural Heritage, Tourism and Handicrafts Organization (CHTHO) has asked the director of the organization to seek the resumption of collaboration with U.S. cultural centers during his upcoming visit to the United States of America. “Collaboration agreements had been signed between CHTHO and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, but all the agreements were halted as a result of the 9/11 event,” Seyyed Mohammad Beheshti told the Persian service of ISNA on Thursday. He noted that cultural collaborations should be revived in the new climate dominating Iran-U.S. political relations. “I think the opposite sides are also keen on the issue,” he added. Beheshti, who was in charge of the CHTHO from 1998 to 2002, was appointed as a senior advisor of CHTHO shortly after President Hassan Rohani selected Mohammad-Ali Najafi as the director of CHTHO. Najafi will accompany Rohani during a visit to New York on September 22. Rohani is scheduled to deliver a speech at the United Nations General Assembly. Najafi will hold talks with the officials of the Met Museum about on organizing joint exhibitions with the National Museum of Iran. He also plans to meet with officials of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago to find a solution for the repatriation of a large number of the Achaemenid tablets Iran had loaned to the university in 1937 for study. In spring 2006, a U.S. district court ruled that a group of people injured by a 1997 bombing in Israel could seize 300 tablets of the group loaned to the university. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit rejected confiscation of the tablets in March 2011. However it ruled that the case should be returned to the lower court for further argument.