March 24 (Bloomberg) -- The New York Parks Department rejects claims by an Egyptian official that the city is neglecting the 3,700-year-old Cleopatra's Needle in Central Park and refuses to address his demand to give the obelisk back.

Zahi Hawass, head of Egypt's Supreme Council on Antiquities, wrote to New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg to protest the city's care of the 71-foot obelisk, a gift from Egypt to the U.S. 126 years ago, the state-run Egyptian newspaper Al-Akhbar reported.

Hawass, who has waged a campaign since 2002 to recover Egyptian antiquities abroad, said weather is damaging the monument and the city should give it back, the newspaper said.

The city parks department, charged with maintaining the obelisk, dismissed the claims that it was neglecting the artifact.

``The obelisk was presented as a gift to the people of New York in 1879,'' department spokesman Warner Johnston said in an e-mailed statement, calling the obelisk a Central Park treasure. ``It is a 3,700-year-old granite monument and our Arts & Antiquities division inspects it regularly.''

Johnston, in an interview, declined to comment further. Johnston said neither Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe nor Arts and Antiquities Director Jonathan Kuhn was available for comment.

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The obelisk, which a pharaoh commissioned as a tribute to himself, was first erected in Heliopolis somewhere around 1500 B.C., according to the Central Park Conservancy's Web site. It had nothing to do with the Egyptian queen Cleopatra, who ruled many years after the monument was built.

The Khedive Ismail, who governed Egypt as Turkey's viceroy in the late 19th century, offered the U.S. the obelisk in the hope of getting economic help.

The 244-ton granite monument has rested near the park's Great Lawn since its long journey across the Mediterranean Sea and Atlantic Ocean to the banks of the Hudson River, according to conservancy's Web site. It took four months just to move it from the river to the park.

Similar monuments also dubbed ``Cleopatra's Needle'' sit in London and Paris.

To contact the reporter for this story: Shannon D. Harrington in New York at sharrington6@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: March 24, 2006 10:44 EST