Cook backs push to return Elgin marbles

Moves to return the Elgin marbles to Greece were given a new impetus yesterday with the launch of a high-profile campaign.

The launch of Marbles Reunited, however, was met with indifference from the Government - no ministers attended the launch - and outright hostility from the British Museum, home to the marbles for the past 200 years, which said it had no intention of parting with an integral part of its collection.

Marbles Reunited, which boasts the support of academics, MPs and cultural and sports figures, is calling for the Government to commit itself to the return of the marbles later this year, when the Olympics will be held in Athens for the first time since 1896.

The campaign's director, Peter Chegwyn, said that two opinion polls commissioned by the group showed that 80 per cent of Britons - and 60 per cent of British Museum visitors - favoured returning the marbles.

However, the questions were couched in such a way as to avoid the words "return" and "restitution".

Instead, people were asked whether they favoured "reuniting" the marbles with those remaining in Athens. Marbles Reunited argues that Britain should accept a Greek proposal, agreeing to a "loan" of the marbles, which would remain in British ownership. Greece wants to display the marbles, with others from the Parthenon, in a new museum being built at the foot of the Acropolis.

Among leading supporters of Marbles Reunited is Robin Cook, the former foreign secretary, who said that an agreement to return the marbles would be "an excellent launch-pad for Britain's bid for the 2012 Olympics". He said the British Museum's apparent determination to keep the marbles was "Victorian and dated", and that the poll results showed the "decent instincts" of British people.

In a statement, the British Museum said that only 50 per cent of the Parthenon marbles survived and these were scattered in 10 museums in eight different countries. In other words, the return of the marbles from Britain would not "reunite" the original marble frieze. It said that the Elgin marbles had been legally acquired by the British Museum in 1816, and that the museum's trustees had a duty to "hold the objects so as to secure maximum public benefit".