Mr. MacGregor's latest public statement, posted on the Internet this month, insists, "Only here can the worldwide significance of the Parthenon sculptures be fully grasped."

If traces of pigment have been detected on the Parthenon sculptures, who is to say when this color was applied?

In 1931 the art dealer Sir Joseph Duveen offered funds to build a gallery for the Parthenon sculptures.

It was built to hold the Parthenon sculpture in natural sunlight that characterises the Athenian climate, arranged in the same way as they would have been on the Parthenon.

The British Museum also holds additional fragments from the Parthenon sculptures acquired from various collections that have no connection with Lord Elgin.

The new museum has been built partly in order to press the British Museum and other institutions - such as the Louvre, which own parts of the Parthenon sculptures - into returning them.

Admiration of them reached its highest pitch in the 18th and 19th centuries; they were described as "the Parthenon sculptures of modern art".

Tourist dollars aside, the Greeks have long said that they want the marbles back to reunite the Parthenon sculptures on the site where they came from.

Dorothy King defends the British Museum in her breezy history of the Parthenon sculptures, The Elgin Marbles, says David Smith.

The Parthenon sculptures are not a matter for the Council as the European Community has no competence in this subject.