Nov. 22 (Bloomberg) -- Italian officials and the Metropolitan Museum of Art's director may discuss a compromise on ownership of disputed antiquities as they meet in Rome today, a Culture Ministry lawyer and a former Met chief said.

The disputed items include a 2,500-year-old pot painted by the Greek artist Euphronios that Italian prosecutors say was robbed from a tomb outside Rome, and a 15-piece set of Hellenistic silver they say was looted at Morgantina in Sicily.

At today's meeting with the Met's director, Philippe de Montebello, Italy is willing to negotiate on the fate of the more than 30 objects in question, said Maurizio Fiorilli, the ministry lawyer who is leading the Italian delegation.

``It depends on the willingness of the Metropolitan,'' Fiorilli said in a telephone interview today. ``Our requests are very clear, the return of the objects and a cultural accord for collaboration.'' Still, ``the return is a secondary issue,'' he said. ``The important thing is the availability of these things.''

Italian Carabinieri police discussed possible joint ownership of antiquities during a meeting in New York last week with former Met director Thomas Hoving, who bought the Euphronios pot in 1972 for $1 million, Hoving said.

By holding talks and demanding the return of objects, Italy aims to end collecting practices that encourage illegal excavation and to work more closely with foreign museums through joint scholarship, art loans and collaboration on legitimate archaeological digs, Fiorilli and other officials have said.

Dealers on Trial

Museums are under increasing pressure to return artifacts from their collections, in part because the former antiquities curator of the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, Marion True, 57, is currently on trial in Rome for handling looted art. She denies the charges. Greece said yesterday it is taking legal action to win the return of four antiquities from the Getty.

Art dealers who helped supply the Metropolitan are also on trial in Rome and ministry officials plan to present the museum's director with evidence that is being used in the cases, Fiorilli said.

The Metropolitan may issue a statement later today, said spokesman Harold Holzer, who declined to comment on the talks.

Culture Minister Rocco Buttiglione said two weeks ago that he invited de Montebello to meet with ministry experts. The museum said it requested such a meeting in February, and hadn't heard anything back until that invitation.

Carabinieri police who visited New York last week met with the museum's former director, Hoving, who believes the Euphronios pot was looted, he said.

Joint Ownership

They discussed a sharing arrangement he created between the Met and the Louvre in Paris to resolve ownership over a Carolingian ivory book cover that was smuggled out of France. The museums agreed to split ownership and display time, shipping the piece back and forth every four years, he said.

``The Carabinieri were impressed and told me they'd pass the info on to the minister,'' said Hoving. He said he expects a similar sharing arrangement to be made for the Euphronios pot, known as a krater, which is painted with a scene from the Trojan War, and for the Met to return the Hellenistic silver outright.

While the culture minister said looted objects must be returned to Italy, he also proposed lending art to U.S. museums for up to 12 years at a time. ``We're not jealous for our cultural patrimony,'' he said at a Nov. 11 news conference.

In one of the Italian court cases, U.S. dealer Robert Hecht, 86, is on trial for supplying looted art -- including the 15-piece silver set and the krater -- to the Metropolitan and other museums. He denies the charges.

Evidence of Looting

When the Met bought the pot, the museum said it came from a man in Lebanon whose father had bought it earlier in the century. Italian police said it was freshly looted from a tomb in Cerveteri, near Rome.

The Getty's True and another former Getty curator, Jiri Frel, have said in depositions that a curator at the Metropolitan told them he knows the site in Cerveteri from which the krater was taken, court records show.

True said the curator, Dietrich von Bothmer, 87, pointed out the spot to her on an aerial photo.

Von Bothmer, who isn't accused of any wrongdoing, said he doesn't know where the krater came from.

``If they can blame it on me, who is an older man, that's easily done,'' von Bothmer said in a telephone interview from his office at the Met. ``I did not see what they are talking about.''

Prosecutors are also using a memoir written by Hecht and taken in a search of his Paris home, which provides contradictory accounts of the krater's origins -- one that matches the Italians' charges, and one that supports his defense. Hecht says the allegedly incriminating one is a work of fiction.

To contact the reporter on this story: Vernon Silver in Rome at vtsilver@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: November 22, 2005 05:54 EST