The call for the inclusion of the Persian Gulf was made on the final day of a two-day conference The Persian Gulf should be listed by UNESCO for its world heritage, an international conference at Durham University in northern England was told Wednesday.

Tehran, 7 July 2008: The Persian Gulf should be listed by UNESCO for its world heritage, an international conference at Durham University in northern England was told Wednesday.

Deputy head of Iran Cultural Heritage, Handicrafts and Tourism Organization (ICHTO), Hamid Baghaee, said the Persian Gulf, which has performed a historical and vital role, also had global significance in links between East and West.

"This waterway not only links culture and civilization of Islamic countries of the region, but also facilitates relations of the Islamic countries of the region to the nations of the far east and south east Asia," Baghaee said.

"We believe that the Persian Gulf, one of the most important world waterways, which has had an undeniable role in complicated and convoluted evolutions from ancient era to now, should register and be identified as a world cultural heritage," he said.

The ICHTO deputy head said that preliminary endeavours to submit the Persian Gulf file as a world cultural heritage were already being pursued and expressed hopes that they would materialize before the second international forum on the Persian Gulf.

To be included on the World Heritage List, sites must be of outstanding universal value and meet at least one of 10 selection criteria, including exhibiting an important interchange of human values, over a span of time or within a cultural area of the world.

The call for the inclusion of the Persian Gulf was made on the final day of a two-day international archaeology conference on the pre-history and history of the waterway.

The conference, sponsored by ICHTO, the British Institute of Persian Studies, and Durham University, was looking at the key role the vital waterway has played in the development of human settlements in the region from the pre-historic to the present.

Unlike many previous workshops on the Persian Gulf that have focused on single issues, themes and periods, the international conference is taking a broader, multi-disciplinary approach through a series of examinations to define its distinctive character.

Speakers presenting papers included many British academics as well as from Australia, Italy, the US and France as well as from the Iranian Centre of Archaeological Research (ICAR) in Tehran

Source : www.chnpress.com