As Italy presses the Metropolitan Museum of Art to return allegedly looted antiquities, it has little direct evidence that some disputed ancient pots in the museum's collection were excavated in Italy, court records show.

The New York museum said it will return antiquities if presented with proof the objects were looted from Italian soil, making the strength of Italy's evidence crucial to winning repatriation.

The Met's director, Philippe de Montebello, will brief the museum's board of trustees on the case later this week or early next, after he returns from a European trip that included talks with Italian officials, museum spokesman Harold Holzer said. The trustees would need to approve any settlement with Italy.

``He and the board truly want this looming embarrassment and continuing hassle to go away,'' said Thomas Hoving, who as the Met's director from 1967 to 1977 helped buy the disputed objects. Even without proof, a compromise is likely, he said.

The lack of direct links between some pots and Italian excavations is a sticking point in Italy's talks with de Montebello, said Maurizio Fiorilli, a Culture Ministry lawyer. Italy is pressing the Met and other museums about looted antiquities as part of an effort to end collecting practices that encourage illegal excavation, he said.

The objects at the Met under discussion are seven Greek-style vases and a 15-piece set of Hellenistic silver that Italian officials say was looted at Morgantina in Sicily.

A compromise being considered by the Met and Italy would include the museum surrendering some items, Italy lending new ones back and the Met transferring ownership of other items to Italy while keeping them in New York as long-term loans, Culture Minister Rocco Buttiglione said on Nov. 22.

Smuggling

For six of the seven pots, Italian evidence doesn't tie them to any clandestine digs or tomb robbers, according to a judge's conviction of Roman art dealer Giacomo Medici, who was charged with smuggling the pots. Italian negotiators are using evidence from his trial in their negotiations with the Met.

For the seventh vase, a 2,500-year-old pot painted by the artist Euphronios, an allegedly incriminating journal found in an American art dealer's Paris apartment makes no mention of the object ever being in Italy. Instead, it surfaces in Switzerland. However, other evidence in the case does place the pot in Italy.

For the silver, proof that it came from Italy includes an excavation site and conversations between police and clandestine diggers, said Malcolm Bell, an archaeologist at the University of Virginia who heads the official Morgantina digs.

``In the case of the silver, there is evidence,'' said Bell, who has pressed the Met to return the pieces.

Italian Soil

Italian officials said it should be assumed that the disputed pots came from Italy, even without direct evidence, as scholarship shows such pots could only have originated there.

``The proof is scientific,'' rather than legal, said Giuseppe Proietti, 60, head of the Culture Ministry's department of research, innovation and organization.

The Italian evidence indicates the pots -- some unrestored and covered with dirt -- were unearthed in recent decades. Under Italian law, antiquities dug up in the country since 1939 are property of the state.

To argue whether there's proof one of these pots came from Italy misses the point, said Colin Renfrew, 68, a Cambridge University archaeology professor and member of the U.K. House of Lords.

``It doesn't matter which country it came from, the Met has no business financing looting,'' he said. ``It's a bureaucratic question which country it gives it back to.''

Prison Sentence

Medici, the accused smuggler, disagreed. He said that there's no proof of crime and that the Met should keep its pots.

``The Metropolitan Museum needs to hear the other side of the story,'' said Medici, 57, who in December 2004 was convicted and sentenced to 10 years in prison for conspiracy, and handling and illegal export of stolen antiquities, including the seven disputed pots.

He says he's innocent, and is free while appealing the verdict, which isn't considered final until he exhausts two levels of appeals.

Over a lunch of seafood salad, sliced steak and a pitcher of red wine at a Rome trattoria, Medici dissected the evidence for each vase, which is listed in a Rome judge's written sentence in the case.

The first object Medici tackled was an amphora with red figures on a black background, the evidence for which is photos seized in a 1995 raid of his Geneva warehouse.

Polaroids

One set of photos, taken by Medici on a trip to New York, showed the amphora behind a glass display case at the Met. Another set, of three Polaroids, showed the same jar, dirty and unrestored.

Medici said he photographed scores of objects in many museums, and doing so doesn't mean he smuggled them from Italy, as prosecutors charge.

As for the Polaroids of the dirty pot, Medici said he couldn't recall ever handing the amphora. He also said he didn't know whether he shot the photos or if someone else did and then sent them to him to get an appraisal of the pot.

``I don't have an elephant's memory,'' he said.

And, Medici added, nothing about the photos indicated the pot came from Italy. ``What does it prove?'' he asked.

The evidence for the other pots is similar.

Polaroids seized at Medici's warehouse show fragments of a psykter vase for cooling wine, painted with horsemen. The same vase is shown, restored, in photos Medici took at the Met.

Other before-and-after photos are listed for a kylix wine cup, an oinochoe pitcher, a 2,300-year-old dinos mixing bowl by the so- called Darius painter and a 2,500-year-old amphora by the so-called Painter of Berlin.

None of the evidence listed for those pots in Medici's conviction directly links them back to Italy.