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Unesco World Heritage in the capital of the Russian Republic of Tatarstan: Kazan Kremlin
Photo: Anton Petrus / IMAGO
The annual meeting of the Unesco World Heritage Committee, scheduled for June in Russia, has been postponed until further notice.
The Russian Unesco ambassador Alexander Kuznetsov, who currently chairs the committee, said in a letter on Thursday that was available to the AFP news agency.
A new date or venue has not been set.
The German Unesco Commission also confirmed the postponement on Friday.
According to the information, the 45th session of the World Heritage Committee should decide, among other things, on the World Heritage nomination of the Jewish-Medieval heritage in Erfurt.
The session was originally scheduled to take place in Kazan on June 19-30, 2022.
Because of the Ukraine war, western countries had called for the meeting to be held elsewhere and for Russia to withdraw the presidency.
Two weeks ago, 46 mostly Western countries, including France and Great Britain, announced that they would boycott the meeting in Kazan, Russia.
However, they could not enforce their demands.
According to information from diplomatic circles, many African countries, among others, were against it.
The postponement of the meeting without further information was therefore the only possible compromise after weeks of negotiations.
»Usually a topic that brings everyone together«
The Secretary General of the German Unesco Commission, Roman Luckscheiter, explained that the postponement could only be an intermediate step: "We still think it is unthinkable to hold the meeting in Russia or under the presidency of Russia as long as Russia is waging this war and thus the Ukrainian cultural and natural heritage endangered, destroyed and thus breaks the World Heritage Convention.
If it comes to that, we won't be taking part.«
The annual meeting of the World Heritage Committee decides which sites and monuments will receive the organisation's coveted World Heritage status and which will have the label revoked.
According to its charter, the committee must meet once a year for this purpose.
In exceptional cases, it may be postponed to next year.
This was the case around 2020 because of the corona pandemic.
One diplomat called for "taking things calmly and preventing world heritage, which is usually an issue that brings everyone together, from being nipped in a war".
feb/dpa/AFP