Veterans Want Skulls of Heroes Returned

By Tsegaye Tadesse

AXUM, Ethiopia (Reuters) - Ethiopian veterans demanded Sunday that Rome return heads severed from their fallen heroes by fascist Italian invaders in the 1930s, saying the expected return of an obelisk this week was not enough.

Ethiopian and Italian officials in the northern Ethiopian city of Axum say the first part of the obelisk, plundered nearly 70 years ago, is due to be flown back to the city in a giant cargo plane Tuesday after repeated delays.

"We welcome the belated return of the Axum obelisk, but the present Italian government must return the skull of Hailu Kebede and of others which Italian fascist forces brutally severed from their dead bodies and displayed in Italian military museums in Rome," Workineh Tegegne, vice president of the Ethiopian Patriotic Association of guerrillas, told Reuters.

"The return of the obelisk is a historic occasion because it heralds the final defeat of fascism and its relegation to the dustbin of history," he said.

Italy promised in 1947 to return the 200-tongranite column, a symbol of the dawn of Ethiopian civilization, but arguments and logistical problems delayed it until November, when the two countries finally agreed to fly it home. Italy's Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini ordered the obelisk --

which is believed to be 1,700 years old -- to be seized from Axum, 850 km (530 miles) north of the capital Addis Ababa, and erected in Rome as a symbol of Italy's victory over Ethiopia in the years leading up to World War II.

Celebrations are planned for the return of the obelisk to Axum, where bridges have been strengthened and roads widened to accommodate the huge pieces of stone that make up the column.

Italy has agreed to cover the transport cost of the obelisk by cargo plane. Landlocked Ethiopia had to build a special runway to accommodate the Russian Antonov 124 jet, one of only two types of aircraft that can carry its sections.

The column, a funerary monument, is considered to be among the finest from Axum, the center of pre-Christian Ethiopia's civilization and the city of the Queen of Sheba, who ruled 1,000 years before the birth of Christ.

Legend has it that God bestowed his favor on the city after the Queen of Sheba's son Menelik I stole the Ark of the Covenant from his father King Solomon in Jerusalem and brought it to Axum where many Ethiopians believe it remains to this day.