"It's great," reacted a diplomat, summing up the relief of many of his colleagues, officials or journalists working at the UN in New York.

According to a UN source, the re-hanging of the tapestry was on track Saturday morning at UN headquarters.

In February 2021, in the midst of an acute Covid-19 crisis and while the UN campus was deserted of its thousands of employees ordered to work from home, the vast fresco had disappeared from the entrance to the Security Council, without no explanation was provided by the Rockefeller family who had loaned it to the UN for more than three decades.

"It's horrible, horrible," reacted UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, taken by surprise at this decision, promising to do everything to bring the work back.

Asked by AFP, the new American ambassador to the UN, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, had however then indicated that she would not make any specific approach to the owner.

Commissioned in 1955 by Nelson Rockefeller, the tapestry taken from the work of Pablo Picasso and which represents the bombardment of the city of Guernica on April 26, 1937 by Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, was woven by the French workshop Jacqueline de La Baume-Dürrbach.

In an interview with the New York Times published on Saturday, Nelson Rockefeller Junior admitted a "communication error" for a work that apparently needed cleaning.

The tapestry is returned to the UN with the possibility for the family to take it back temporarily for exhibitions in the United States and around the world.

The presence of the tapestry, in front of which presidents, ministers and other ambassadors going to the Security Council regularly pass, aims to make them aware of the tragedy of war.

"This tapestry is not only the moving reminder of the horrors of war, but because of its positioning, it also bore witness to so many stories that have been unfolding since 1985 around the Security Council," said a while ago. a year the spokesperson for the UN, Stéphane Dujarric.

Asked Thursday about the rumors of an imminent return of the work, his deputy, Farhan Haq, underlined that, for the head of the UN, the exhibition of this tapestry is accompanied by "a very important message for the world in terms of the dangers and horrors of war".

"And it's good to have that reminder here at the UN," he added.

© 2022 AFP