www.chnpress.com By Soudabeh Sadigh As the countdown to UNESCO’s deadline for complete modification of Jahan Nama Tower has now begun, the height of the tower has not yet reached the expected level.
Tehran, 11 January 2007 (CHN Foreign Desk) -- While only 21 days are left to the determined deadline by UNESCO for modification of Jahan Nama Tower in the city of Isfahan, workers recently resumed lowering of the tower. However, considering the short time to the deadline which is February 1, 2007, and the amount of work which is still left, there is not much hope to finish the job by the determined time.
According to Reza Dolatyar, director of Pardisan Company which is in charge of the project for lowering the height of the Tower, only some initial works such as setting the scaffolds have been done in this phase of the project but the process for removing concrete blocks has not been started yet.
During its latest session which was held in Lithuania on July 2006, UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee gave Iran a 6-month period to bring the tower to the expected level or else the world heritage site of Naqsh-e Jahan Square would face exclusion from the list of UNESCO’s World Heritage Sites and would be placed as an Endangered World Heritage.
“Considering that the project has just been restarted, and taking into account the delicacy which must be implement in this phase of modification, the project requires several months to be completed and will not be finished by February 2007 which is the deadline set by UNESCO,” said Dolatyar.
In 2005, UNESCO determined that the height of the Tower should be reduced by 12 meters on its eastern side and 24.48 meters on its western side. In order to observe UNESCO’s requirement in this project, two more stories of Jahan Nama Tower must be removed.
Located west of Naqsh-e Jahan Square, Jahan Nama Tower still spoils the aerial buffer zone of the Square which contains a complex of monuments registered on the UNESCO World Heritage list in 1979. |