Iran demands return of mummy

Iran says it's pursuing the return of an Iranian mummy which it says was smuggled into Pakistan.

The mummy, which the Iranian Cultural Heritage Organisation says is an ancient member of the Iranian royal family, is in a museum in Karachi after police seized it from a gang who were trying to sell it -- reportedly for more than a million dollars.

The organisation said that under a convention of the United Nations Cultural Organisation, UNESCO, it would take legal action to get the mummy back.

It said it had asked the Iranian Foreign Ministry to raise the matter with Pakistan.

Archaeologists say the two-thousand-six-hundred year-old mummy is that of a princess with engravings in ancient Persian.

From the newsroom of the BBC World Service