Iraqi Jewish Archive - some progress?

UNANIMOUS SENATE RESOLUTION: Senate bids to save ancient Iraqi Jewish archive. Time is running out for State Dept. to renegotiate the status of the massive collection before it’s returned to Iraq in June (Rebecca Shimoni Stoil, Times of Israel).

The resolution “strongly urges the Department of State to renegotiate with the Government of Iraq the provisions of the original agreement that was signed between the National Archives and Records Administration and the Coalition Provisional Authority in order to ensure that the Iraqi Jewish Archive be kept in a place where its long-term preservation and care can be guaranteed.”

It also implies that the archives, now in the US, should not be returned to Iraq, stipulating that “the Iraqi Jewish Archive should be housed in a location that is accessible to scholars and to Iraqi Jews and their descendants who have a personal interest in it.” Only a handful of Jews remain in Iraq, and their descendants are scattered across the world, with large numbers living in Israel and the United States.

Renegotiation sounds good to me. I could get behind that. But the question is whether the State Department and Iraq can. Stay tuned ...

Background here and links.