Art experts fear that even a sealed vault will not be enough to save the 2,100-year-old gold of Bactria from the war LOCKED away in a vault underneath the presidential palace in Kabul is a priceless treasure which is at the mercy of the American bombardment and the Taleban's spite and greed.

Art experts want the UN to rescue this 2,100-year-old hoard of gold antiquities, called the Treasure of Bactria, before it is destroyed or the Taleban melt it down.

hat is remarkable is that the 20,000 or more gold statues, necklaces and ornaments set with precious stones have survived for so long in a city scarred by years of war.

Rumours swirl around the bazaars of the capital about what the Taleban has done with the treasure, which was excavated in 1978 from a royal burial site in northern Afghanistan by a Soviet team during the Soviet Union's occupation.

The team recounted how the 20,000 gold pieces included statues, necklaces, dress ornaments, pendants, hairpins and buckles decorated with precious stones. There were also plaques studded with jewels and a crown covered in pearls and turquoise.

The treasure survived until its excavation in 1978 because there was nothing conspicuous about the tomb. After that, to protect the trove dating from 100 BC, the country's former Communist ruler and Soviet puppet, President Najibullah, sealed it in seven trunks and hid them in a vault carved out of rock and protected by a steel door bolted shut by seven locks with keys held by seven different people. At least three of the key holders are now dead, Mr Najibullah included.

 Christian Manhart, a specialist in Asian cultural heritage at Unesco, said: "We are very concerned the Taleban will get in. They have tried to break through the enforced concrete walls, so far without success."  Another popular fable circulating in Kabul, he said, is that the Russians have a duplicate set of the seven keys. Others claim that a renegade band of Soviet troops broke into the vault in the last hours before they abandoned Kabul and replaced some of the treasure with fakes.

Mr Manhart said that all anyone can say for sure is that the treasure was last seen and inspected by international archaeologists in 1993 when the safe was opened for one day to dispel rumours that the Afghans had sold it.

The Russian professor who excavated the tombs, Victor Sarianidi, fears that the treasure must already be in the hands of collectors in Japan, Britain and the United States or has been stolen by warring troops. He said it was impossible to value its artistic and historical value let alone its commercial worth.

Unesco says that it has given the Americans a map so that its bombers can avoid vital cultural sites, which include the vault in the presidential palace and the Ministry of Information and Culture, where other museum treasures are stored. US military chiefs say that if these buildings are being used by the Taleban leadership, then they can make no promises.

 There are many in Kabul who say the Taleban have already handed the treasure to Osama bin Laden. Robert Kluyver, of the Society for the Preservation of Afghanistan's Cultural Heritage (SPACH), was told recently that bin Laden had arranged for it to be smuggled across the mountains to Pakistan in March where dealers awaited his orders to sell it. That happened, he said, soon after the Taleban incurred the wrath of the West by ordering its troops to blow up the colossal figures of the Bamiyan Buddhas and declared the country's art treasures to be idolatrous.

Carla Grissman, who has spent years cataloguing Afghanistan's disappearing cultural history, believes that the Taleban has resisted the temptation to loot the Treasure of Bactria. Mrs Grissman, who is also with SPACH, helped to salvage what she could from the Kabul museum with the Taleban's help.But she was worried by the regime's change of heart in March when it blew up the Buddhas and smashed what little remained in the Kabul museum as "infidel idols". She agrees that "the Taleban could parade the Bactrian treasure and destroy it as a confrontational gesture to the West, but I hope not".

Mrs Grissman says that nothing from the Treasure of Bactria has so far been offered for sale on the blackmarket.

St John Simpson, the British Museum's assistant keeper in the Department of the Ancient Near East, said that the destruction or dispersal of these treasures would be a tremendous loss. It was a very important find, he added.

The country's arts heritage was considered one of the richest in Asia because Afghanistan was the cradle of Greco-Bactrian art. It was there that the Asian art merged with Grecian art to give the Buddha a human form.

About 80 per cent of the Kabul museum collection has been stolen or destroyed. Unesco was accused of failing to protect Afghanistan's cultural treasures when it blocked an attempt in 1999 to move everything to Switzerland, despite the Taleban and President Rabani, of the Northern Alliance allegedly agreeing to the move. Unesco says there was no deal with the Taleban and it did not trust rival factions in Kabul not to rob the caravan of treasures.  

 Copyright 2001