USR asks gov't to set up national museum at Rosia Montana

The Save Romania Union (USR) is requesting the Orban government to establish a national museum at Rosia Montana to allow the public to visit of the famous Roman galleries, as well as other measures to guarantee the inclusion of site on the UNESCO heritage list. According to a USR press statement released on Tuesday, at the beginning of the new parliamentary session, Senator Mihai Gotiu asked Prime Minister Ludovic Orban to carry out a set of measures to guarantee the inclusion of Rosia Montana on the UNESCO World Heritage List at the World Heritage Committee meeting to be held this summer. "The notification, sent at the end of last week, was a necessary and obligatory step, but even with a favourable report from the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) [a body of UNESCO expert rapporteurs], the decision to include the site on the World Heritage List will not come by itself. Months of consistent and intense diplomatic efforts will follow externally, contacting and informing the members of the World Heritage Committee, and unequivocal measures and decisions internally to support the external diplomatic effort, taking into account the extremely high interest of the citizens and my availability, of my USR colleagues and the civil society to get involved, in different ways, in supporting this endeavour, I am asking you to urgently draw up an action plan - to be called the Road Map for Rosia Montana to UNESCO - that you will make public," said Gotiu. Among the measures requested by USR there are also actions to promote Rosia Montana at the diplomatic level; a schedule of real public consultations and debates for drawing up a new general planning for the site; capitalising on the movable cultural heritage found during archaeological investigations under the Alburnus Maior Program of the early 2000s. Culture Minister Bogdan Gheorghiu signed last Friday a notification regarding the resumption of the registration procedure for the inclusion of the Rosia Montana site on the UNESCO World Heritage List. AGERPRES (RO - author: Irinela Visan, editor: Claudia Stanescu; EN - author: Corneliu-Aurelian Colceriu, editor: Adina Panaitescu)