In the case of libraries and museums, he believed many of the most precious treasures had been taken intact for sale on the international art market, and the rest destroyed to create confusion about what was missing."One must not oversimplify it There was no one clear motive," Dr Riedlmayer said. If those too had been looted, Dr Roper said, it would mean "a whole nation's collections had been wiped out".Andreas Riedlmayer, an Islamic art and architecture specialist from Harvard who has also studied the destruction of the National Library in Sarajevo during the Bosnian conflict, said he believed some of the destruction was quite deliberate.Although mob rule played a part, he believed some archives – especially in ministries and police stations – were deliberately destroyed to eradicate the evidence of Saddam Hussein's repressive rule. We've also lost material from the library of the Ministry of Religious Endowments, which contained rare early legal and literary materials, priceless Korans, calligraphy and illumination – the kind of thing that appeared in international exhibitions in the past," he said.Some of Iraq's most valuable collections may yet be safe, because they were stored separately at the Saddam Library. The US military's failure to prevent the calamity must be investigated to prevent it happening again, they added. After the looting and burning at government ministries and the ransacking of Iraq's main archaeological museum, the burning of the library, with its thousands of rare printed books and hand-written archives, marks a further erasure of Iraq's past, obliterating large chunks of Middle Eastern history and destroying many unique documents.Geoffrey Roper, head of the Islamic Bibliography Unit at Cambridge University, said: "If people's personal possessions are lost they can be replaced, but these things can never be replaced."The archive contained a lot of early Arabic printed books, which are very scarce and very fragile, a lot of which have survived in just one or two editions. The burning of Iraq's National Library is a "devastating loss" and is the equivalent of losing the British Library, international academics said.

Works by Andy Warhol, Peter Blake and Henri Cartier-Bresson, inspired by Monroe, are also on display Monroe died in 1962, aged 36, from a drug overdose She was at the peak of her career..

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The owner is absolutely devastated," Ted Owen, the managing director, said.Among the items on show are previously unseen photographs, mementoes and designer dresses. "We were assured there would be security guards and they would be held in a secure casing. Detective Inspector Tim Forber appealed for help from anyone who may have been offered the jewellery for sale or who was at the exhibition at the time.Antonia Spanos, the gallery's head of exhibitions, said: "Marilyn wore these items of jewellery when she was going out but she had so much stuff, she would give things away to people who were like her surrogate family." She said some of the other items in the exhibition were more valuable than the jewellery and that the thieves had not been experts.The jewellery had been held by the auction house Cooper Owen on behalf of the owner. Guards and some of the 150 visitors stopped the thieves taking other items. It contained six items of jewellery worth a total of nearly £200,000. Since then, the items have passed through several owners on the lucrative circuit in celebrity collectables.The gallery, which was open again yesterday after the break-in on Monday afternoon, has beefed up its security.The thieves barged in without buying tickets and are believed to have knocked over the display case.

Described as "the biggest ever exhibition devoted to the life of the ultimate screen icon" it is due to spend three years travelling the world.Monroe gave the jewellery to Bebe Goddard, a childhood friend with whom she lived after leaving a series of orphanages. The man, who has not been named, is said to be devastated.The items were among more than 250 items on show at the exhibition Marilyn Monroe – Life of a Legend, which opened last week. A 45-year-old man was released on bail yesterday.The ring, which has an "M" motif, and the bangle, which Monroe is believed to have worn on her first date with the baseball star Joe DiMaggio, were lent to the gallery by a private collector. The gallery's head of security caught a man after chasing him along the South Bank. Jewellery worn by Marilyn Monroe at the height of her fame in the 1950s has been stolen from a London gallery. One man smashed a display case and grabbed a diamond-encrusted gold ring and a gold bangle worth an estimated £40,000 while the second diverted a security guard.The men fled the gallery at County Hall on the South Bank and tried to disappear in the crowds around the London Eye. It is 15 members, five of whom have vetoes."It depends on those five crucially, so it is the responsibility of the US and the UK and the other three permanent members as well."After speaking with Mr Annan, the Prime Minister had an informal talk with French President Jacques Chirac, who was bitterly opposed to the war.The pair met in an inner courtyard at the Athens compound for 20–25 minutes, a spokesman for Mr Blair said.The two men discussed issues raised at the summit, including Iraq and the Middle East, in a "perfectly amiable" conversation, the spokesman added..