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Russia says Amber Room will be brought home if discovered

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The Russian Culture Agency said on Friday that if the famous Amber Room stolen by the Nazis has been found, there should be no problems in returning it to Russia.
MOSCOW, February 22 (RIA Novosti) - The Russian Culture Agency said on Friday that if the famous Amber Room stolen by the Nazis has been found, there should be no problems in returning it to Russia.

Germany's Spiegel Online reported on Tuesday that the 18th century chamber of amber panels, a gift from Prussian king Friedrich Wilhelm I to Russia's Peter the Great, may have been discovered by treasure hunters deep underground near the German border with the Czech Republic. The Amber Room has been missing since 1945.

"If, hypothetically speaking, the room still exists, there will be no difficulties from a legal point of view" in having it brought back, said the head of Russia's Culture Agency, Mikhail Shvydkoi.

However, he said he doubted the room would be found intact because amber, a fossil resin, decays in the dark.

Spiegel said that on the weekend the treasure hunters detected about two metric tons of gold believed to be part of the Amber Room. The find is reportedly located in a man-made cavern 20 meters (66 feet) below ground near the village of Deutschneudorf.

The team is still digging its way down toward the cavern, but work is likely to take several weeks.

Village mayor Heinz-Peter Haustein, who led the search, told Spiegel: "I'm well over 90 percent sure we have found the Amber Room. The chamber is likely to be part of a labyrinth of storage rooms that the Nazis built here. I knew it was in this area. I just never knew exactly where."

The digging work will require the help of explosives experts and engineers, Haustein said. He is convinced that the treasure is hidden in a "network of copper and silver ore mines."

Tatiana Zharkova, the press-secretary of the Tsarskoye Selo museum where a partial replica of the Amber Room has been recreated according to available blueprints, ruled out the possibility that the Amber Room could have been discovered.

"The Amber Room did not contain a single gram of gold. The metallic constructions were also not of precious metals," she said, adding that only the Florentine mosaic panels and bronze candelabrums were backed by gold leaf.

The Amber Room, dubbed the "eighth wonder of the world," decorated with pure amber panels, mirrors and precious stones, was housed at the Catherine Palace near St. Petersburg.

Experts estimate the amber interior to be worth $300 million.

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