John Hooper in Rome Tuesday January 3, 2006 The Guardian A team of Italian restorers this month begin trying to piece together a priceless, two-metre (7ft) statue of the Greek goddess Hera, aware they hold the future of cultural relations between Rome and Athens in their hands. In an incident that went almost unnoticed at the time, the authorities in Athens last year suspended all further digs by Italian archaeologists in Greece and slapped a five-year ban on an Italian lecturer. The sanctions were imposed after officials learned that the 4th century BC statue, found in an Italian dig on Crete, had fallen and been smashed in transit. The incident led to questions in the Greek and Italian parliaments, and one of the archaeologists at the centre of the row has claimed that the affair is being used to discredit Italy's prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi. The joint director of the ill-fated dig, Professor Francesca Ghedini of the University of Padua, is the sister of Mr Berlusconi's lawyer. "This is the only reason why this unpleasant incident has been discussed first in the Greek parliament and then in the Italian," Prof Ghedini was quoted as telling the local newspaper Il Mattino di Padova. According to Italian media, the statue was knocked over by a freak gust of wind. Prof Ghedini said: "I wept when they telephoned me to give me the news." But the fact that she was not on hand to supervise the operation has drawn criticism in Italy. In a parliamentary question, Katia Berillo of the Italian Communists' party demanded to know whether the Greek authorities were told of the find, at Gortys in the south of the island, before the Italian archaeologists embarked on what she described as "clumsily executed operations". Prof Ghedini said the Greeks were kept fully informed. She denied that future Italian digs had been jeopardised, but confirmed that her colleague, Jacopo Bonetto, who supervised the removal of the statue, had been banned from taking part in any new digs for a five-year period. The Ansa news agency yesterday reported that the statue would be repaired in Rome at Italian expense.