The carefully worded comments by Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, Secretary-General of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC), came after he completed a visit to Xinjiang as the July anniversary of deadly ethnic riots approached.

"We hope development on the cultural field will go hand in hand with the economic field," Ihsanoglu told reporters in Beijing before leaving China.

Ihsanoglu arrived last week for his seven-day visit -- the first-ever to China by a head of the 57-member, pan-Islamic organisation -- that included two days in Xinjiang, the traditionally Muslim northwestern region.

Authorities there are bracing for the July 5 anniversary of deadly violence that pitted Muslim ethnic Uighurs against members of China's dominant Han ethnic group, leaving nearly 200 people dead, according to government figures.

The riots in the capital Urumqi provoked an outcry last year in some Muslim countries over China's treatment of Xinjiang's rougly eight million Uighurs, who have long alleged political, religious and cultural repression by Beijing.

Since the riots, China has said it would pour around 10 billion yuan (1.5 billion dollars) in development aid into the region beginning in 2011 in a bid to raise Uighur living standards and quell simmering discontent.

However, Uighurs complain that rapid state-backed development in the region has benefited only Han migrants to the area and that an influx of Han threatens to further swamp their culture.

Ihsanoglu declined to comment further on what the OIC would like to see in Xinjiang, and otherwise applauded China's efforts to increase development there.

Ihsanoglu, who met with government leaders in Xinjiang, said China had also pledged to raise the per capita income in the region up to the national average by 2015.

"I think this is a serious attempt from the government to address the issue of unrest," he said.

Ihsanoglu, whose Xinjiang tour took him to Urumqi and the ancient Silk Road oasis city of Kashgar, said the situation ahead of the anniversary appeared "more relaxed."

While he was in Xinjiang, Ihsanoglu said he toured a religious school and mosques, and in Beijing he met with China's top legislator Wu Bangguo and the head of the National Administration for Religious Affairs.

earlier related report
Western archaeologists seek protection for Afghan treasures
Kabul (AFP) June 22, 2010 - A senior Western archaeologist in Afghanistan says he is struggling to protect a vast wealth of cultural treasures from being stolen and smuggled to wealthier countries, or worse, destroyed altogether.

"I think there is absolutely no site in this country which is unaffected," Philippe Marquis, the director of a team of French government-funded archaeologists operating in Afghanistan, told AFP in a recent interview.

"The illegal trade in antiquities is very significant, and is related to all the illegal activities which are going on in Afghanistan," he added.

Afghanistan's position on the ancient Silk Road that linked east with west has left the country with a rich cultural heritage.

But decades of war have hampered efforts to conduct proper archaeological investigations, while a lack of regulation means that priceless treasures are being smuggled out of the country at an alarming rate.

The looting is often carried out by poor villagers who are paid by middlemen often based elsewhere in the region -- a problem the French have gone some way to addressing by paying the looters to work on their digs instead.

But Marquis believes much of the blame lies elsewhere. It is illegal to take object more than 100 years old out of Afghanistan, but enforcement of the law is weak, and most stolen antiquities are smuggled to wealthier countries.

The United Nations recently sought the advice of the French archaeologists after it discovered a large number of Afghan antiquities in the shipment of a departing staff member.

"People are often not even aware of the importance, they just think, well this would be nice on a shelf in my house in France or the UK," says Marquis.

The French archaeological mission has been working in Afghanistan since 1922, when the Afghan authorities invited the government in Paris to begin carrying out surveys in the country.

It had to interrupt its work during World War II, and again in 1982, when the pro-Soviet regime asked its archaeologists to leave.

But it returned in 2002 and now has several projects around the country, including excavations in the historic cities of Bamiyan in central Afghanistan -- site of the ancient Buddha statues destroyed by the Taliban -- and Balkh in the north.

Last year, in cooperation with the Afghan National Institute of Archaeology, it began an excavation of an ancient Buddhist settlement at the Mes Aynak mine, which has the second-largest known unexploited copper deposits in the world.

The Afghan government has awarded the mining project to the China Metallurgical Group Corporation, which is keen to begin work at the site, 40 kilometres (25 miles) outside the capital Kabul.

But Marquis says it risks destroying untold numbers of archaeological treasures, and he and his team are racing to rescue as much as possible before the mining work begins.

"It appears there was a copper mine on the site from the second century BC right up to the sixth century AD," he says.

"Excavation started in 2009 and we have already discovered wall paintings and hundreds of statues, some quite large, including a five-metre sleeping Buddha."

The area around Mes Aynak has already been heavily looted. Marquis's team found parts of giant clay statues left behind by thieves who had apparently broken them apart because they were too heavy to carry in their entirety.

"Virtually all the statues had been mutilated, it was a case of people taking what they could carry," says Marquis, describing the market in antiquities as a "major source of income for the black economy."

"The problem of plundering of historic sites in Afghanistan is not only an Afghan problem, it is also an international one.

"We are trying to raise awareness in Europe that people buying these objects are part of the criminal process. They are as responsible as those who are looting the site. The only way to stem this is to stop the demand."

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