The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) has announced that it is sending a team of experts to Baghdad to put together a database of items stolen from historical Iraqi sites during the recent conflict.

In a message to a meeting of international experts in London - which included representatives from the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg, the Middle East Museum in Berlin, the Louvre in Paris and the British Museum in London - UNESCO director general, Koïchiro Matsuura said such a list would be essential in allowing customs officers, the police and dealers to identify any object that came into their possession.

Matsuura said that contacts with Interpol, the World Customs Organisation and the International Confederation of Art Dealers had already been made.

Also, UN secretary general, Kofi Annan has been asked for a resolution to impose a temporary embargo on the acquisition of all Iraqi cultural items and for any that have already been acquired or exported to be returned.

Criticism has been levelled at occupying US forces for not doing more to prevent the theft or destruction of historic artefacts from the Iraqi Museum in Baghdad - which alone contained over 170,000 items - and other sites throughout the country.

It has also been suggested that a great many of the missing items were looted to order.

Experts have already indicated that it could take months before a definitive list of items missing from the Baghdad museum is available, whilst it is not yet known what has been stolen from sites elsewhere in the country.

With a recorded history going back 7,000 years and containing about 1,000 acknowledged historial sites, Iraq is known as the cradle of civilisation.

Treasures missing from just Baghdad alone include the Warka Vase, a Sumerian piece dating from 3100BC; the Lion of Nimrud, an iconic representation of a lion attacking a Nubian, carved in about 850BC and a copper figure from the reign of King Naram-Sin of Akkad dated 2250BC.

It is reported that some objects, which were removed for safe keeping by local people, have been returned to the museum. The building itself was undamaged in the conflict.