Italy promises obelisk will go home

An Italian foreign ministry official, on a visit to Ethiopia, has said that the Italian Government is still planning to return an ancient obelisk removed from the holy city of Axum during the Italian occupation of Ethiopia in the 1930s.

The comments by the undersecretary in the foreign ministry, Alfredo Mantica contradict a statement from an official in the Italian culture ministry last week that the monument had been in Italy so long it had been naturalised and that it was also too fragile to move.

The obelisk, which is more than 1,500 years old, currently stands in a square in Rome.

Italy agreed in 1998 to send the obelisk back to Ethiopia, but the border war between Ethiopia and Eritrea put the plans on hold.

From the newsroom of the BBC World Service