TEHRAN -- The deputy head of the legal department of the Cultural Heritage, Tourism and Handicrafts Organization (CHTHO) Omid Ghanami has stated that negotiation is the best option open for the retrieval of Iran’s valuable Achaemenid artifact.

The best method of recovering the Achaemenid soldier bas-relief is through negotiation with its French owner Denyse Berend, Ghanami told the Persian service of CHN on Friday.
The valuable relic, depicting the head of an Achaemenid soldier, which was smuggled from Iran about 70 years ago, is to be put up for sale at Christie’s auction house in London on October 25.
“Negotiations with the British government and UNESCO are other options open to us in the settlement of the case,” Ghanami said.
“The CHTHO aims to resolve the case peacefully, however it will not itself participate in the auction either as a legal entity or as a natural person,” he emphasized.
Sussan Cheraghi, a member of the legal department of the CHTHO had previously said that UNESCO could not help Iran due to certain legal constraints.
However, she said that the CHTHO has set up a program using the mass media to encourage world public opinion to put pressure on Christie’s to halt the auction.
The limestone bas-relief was originally purchased by Berend at the New York branch of Sotheby’s, the international auction house, in 1971. It had been severed from the eastern staircase of the Apadana Palace, which was built by Xerxes I at Persepolis near the modern-day city of Shiraz in southern Iran’s Fars Province.
The artifact had previously been withdrawn from Christie’s April 2005 sale after Iran filed a lawsuit against the auction house in a London court claiming ownership of the valuable relic.
The court rejected Iran’s claim last February, arguing that the item had previously been sold in a Sotheby’s sale without any objection on the part of Iranian officials.