Turkey wants help authenticating Picassos

The Turkish culture minister, Istemihan Talay, says he wants foreign art experts to check the authenticity of the country's growing collection of alleged Picasso paintings recovered by police.

Turkish experts have already decided that eight paintings seized from smugglers in undercover operations over the last year are genuine Picassos.

Officials think the paintings were stolen from a Kuwaiti palace during the Gulf War and were smuggled into Turkey from northern Iraq.

But, so far, no one has claimed ownership of the canvases.

Two more putative Picassos were added to the collection at the weekend when police in Istanbul arrested an independent MP, Mustafa Bayram, as he waited outside a house where his nephew tried to sell the works to undercover police, for three-million-dollars. But one British art expert, from the London-based Art Loss Register, has said he believes those two paintings are copies of originals hanging in the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg.

The Turkish parliament has lifted Mr Bayram's immunity from prosecution to allow police to pursue their investigation against him.

From the newsroom of the BBC World Service