(AFP) – Nov 21, 2007

THE HAGUE (AFP) — The Anne Frank Foundation weighed in Wednesday on a row over the fate of a diseased tree that the child writer gazed on as she hid from Nazi occupation, saying the chestnut was a security risk.

"The surroundings are unsafe because of the diseased tree," the foundation's director Hans Westra told a press conference.

Amsterdam authorities had ordered the tree to be cut down on Wednesday, but the day earlier, a judge suspended the felling licence until mid-January after local residents and the Dutch Tree Foundation filed a legal claim to stop it.

The 150-year-old tree stands in the garden of a canal house on Amsterdam's Keizersgracht and is overlooked by the annex the Frank family hid in during World War II, which is now a museum run by the foundation.

Westra stressed that the museum would remain open but said that if emergency measures to secure the tree took too long, the foundation would ask Amsterdam mayor Job Cohen to step in and authorise the felling of the tree.

There are fears that the trunk could snap, leaving the 25-tonne-tree to fall on the Anne Frank house. Campaigners believe the tree is not as badly affected as the city says and want to shore it up.

"Security is the most important thing for us," Westra said. The Anne Frank House is the most popular museum in Amsterdam and will host over a million visitors this year."

Anne Frank wrote in her diary on February 23, 1944: "The two of us looked out at the blue sky, the bare chestnut tree glistening with dew, the seagulls and other birds glinting with silver as they swooped through the air.

"We were so moved and entranced that we couldn't speak."

Westra spoke out against proposals to chain the tree to keep it upright. He wants it cut down and a genetically identical tree planted in its place.

"What is standing there now is no longer the tree that Anne Frank knew because it has already been cut down considerably in earlier efforts to save it," Westra said.

"Experts say that in 2010, the tree will be completely dead and we will be left with a dead tree chained to the surrounding buildings."

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