The Italian government said yesterday that it would withdraw civil claims against the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles related to 40 ancient artifacts that the Getty has agreed to return. The Italian authorities contend that those antiquities, including an Etruscan duck, were unearthed at archaeological sites and smuggled out of the country. Announcing the withdrawal of charges at a news conference in Rome, Italy's culture minister, Francesco Rutelli, called the agreement with the Getty a victory for "cultural diplomacy." Yet Mr. Rutelli and Maurizio Fiorilli, a Culture Ministry lawyer, said the decision on the civil charges would have no direct impact on the criminal case against Marion True, the Getty's former antiquities curator. She has been on trial in Rome since November 2005 on charges of conspiring to traffic in stolen artifacts, but has maintained that she is innocent. After a year of on-and-off negotiations, the Italian government and the Getty announced on Wednesday that they had reached a pact providing for the return of the 40 antiquities. The accord calls for Italy to lend rare archaeological treasures to the Getty, whose antiquities collection is housed in a newly expanded museum villa in Pacific Palisades, Calif.