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The museum, which houses some 200,000 artifacts from the stone age through recent Islamic art, was looted in April 2003 during the U.S.-led invasion and has struggled to recover 15,000 stolen objects since. The structure is still in a terrible state, said Bahaa Mayah, adviser to Iraq's Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities, at a UNESCO-organized conference in Athens on the restitution of cultural objects to their countries of origin. The museum still lacks a security system, reliable electricity, and a fire system.

There's no fear of renewed looting, but the structure could become a target for bombers, said museum media official Maysoon al-Bayati. ''We are afraid if we open the museum, bombers with explosive belts would come and damage the museum.''

At the same conference, U.S. Marine Reserve Col. Matthew Bogdanos, the investigator who led the probe into the looting, told the Associated Press that the looting of artifacts is helping to finance extremist groups such as al-Qaida and Shiite militias.

In 2006, Marines arrested a group of suspected insurgents in underground bunkers where they found  vases, cylinder seals, and statuettes that had been stolen from the National Museum alongside weapons, ammunition, and uniforms.

Laurent Levi-Strauss, chief of the cultural objects and museums section at UNESCO, questioned Bogdanos's theory, saying it was immensely difficult to determine where looted antiquities were going. ''The market is totally secret, so we don't know where they are,'' he said. ''We don't know who is buying them or where the money is going.''