Our commitment to right these historical wrongs should not be doubted

Alan Howarth

He indicated in The Guardian that the resolution of claims could include restitution of the work of art, financial compensation, or moral recompense by displaying the object's history next to it.

"If the panel recommend restitution - and both the claimant and present owner accept the judgement - the government will take the panel's recommendation very seriously indeed," Mr Howarth wrote.

He said the government remained committed to "righting these historical wrongs".

But British galleries are prevented under current British law from disposing of art that they hold in trust for the nation.

"It may well not be a straightforward matter to identify just solutions," said the minister.

"Whatever wrongs were done in the Nazi era, works of art were - we should start by assuming - acquired in good faith and have probably been held for the public benefit for considerable periods."

Painful matters

He stressed the new panel would have to deal with sensitive and emotive matters that "remain horribly painful to the families who may have suffered, among other unspeakable things, the looting of cherished and valuable possessions".

A nationwide audit is currently under way to investigate exactly how many artworks are suspected of being looted by the Nazis.

During the period 1933 to 1945, it is believed the Nazis oversaw the looting of hundreds of thousands of paintings and sculptures.

The World Jewish Congress estimates that about 110,000 artworks remain unaccounted for.

Suspicion surrounds Picasso's Weeping Woman

In London's Tate Gallery alone, around 80 paintings are suspected of having a Nazi provenance.

These include Paul C�zanne's The Avenue of the Jas de Bouffan, Picasso's Head of a Woman and his Weeping Woman.

Rightful return

Some paintings have already been handed back to their original heirs.

In March, London's Royal Academy returned The Three Stages of Life by Count Leopold von Kalckreuth to the descendants of Elizabeth Gotthilf, who fled Vienna in the wake of the Nazi invasion.

The picture had been on loan from the Neue Pinakothek gallery in Munich.

It became the first work exhibited in Britain to become the object of restitution by The Commission for Looted Art in Europe.