UNESCO World Heritage Committee forum to open in St Petersburg

ST. PETERSBURG, May 30 (Itar-Tass) -- An international forum of
experts will open here on Monday to debate various proposals to set the
borderlines of such UNESCO World Heritage site as the historic center of
St. Petersburg and related groups of monuments, as well as a final reading
of the declaration on this site, which has the remarkable universal value.
The forum is to last two days in the city on the Neva River. Leading
Russian and foreign specialists in the conservation of the cultural
heritage will participate in the forum. Executive Secretary of the Russian
Commission for UNESCO Grigory Ordzhonikidze and Director of the UNESCO
World Heritage Center Kishore Rao will deliver a welcome speech to the
forum.
High on the agenda of the forum will be the debates on various
proposals to set the borderlines and the buffer zones of the UNESCO World
Heritage site of the historic center of St. Petersburg.
St. Petersburg specialists in the protection of cultural heritage have
been working on the issue already for several years. They have been
specifying the borderlines of the St. Petersburg monuments nominated as a
UNESCO World Heritage site in 1990.
The experts will debate a declaration on the outstanding universal
value of St. Petersburg as a UNESCO World Heritage site. The St.
Petersburg specialists have drafted the document that constitutes some
kind of a visiting card of the northern Russian capital. The declaration
gives all the reasons in brief for declaring the city as a UNESCO World
Heritage site. The declaration reading negotiated with international
experts will be passed to the Russian federal government. The final
reading of the declaration is expected to be presented at the 35th session
of the UNESCO World Heritage Committee in 2011.
The historic center of St. Petersburg and related groups of monuments
was put on the UNESCO World Heritage list at the 14th session of the
UNESCO World Heritage Committee in Banff, Canada, on December 12, 1990.
This UNESCO World Heritage site is unique for the makeup and scale of
monuments and is situated in two Russian federal constituents (St.
Petersburg and the Leningrad Region). The site is made up of 36 components
and 136 elements spreading on over 26,000 hectares. Meanwhile, the
distance between the most remote elements of the site makes about 100
kilometers and even more.
-0-baz