Sharjah24 - AFP: Mexico's president on Monday slammed as "immoral" the auctioning in France of items that form part of other countries' cultural heritage, after another sale of pre-Columbian artefacts from the Latin American country.

"The auctions that take place in France are immoral, it is very regrettable that the French government has not legislated on this," Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador told reporters in Mexico City.

On January 28, auction house Millon sold about 30 pre-Hispanic Mexican artefacts despite calls from Mexico's culture ministry to refrain from doing so.

Lopez Obrador said his wife, historian Beatriz Gutierrez, had sent a letter to the French Foreign Ministry, urging it "to intervene in these auctions of pre-Hispanic art" taken "illegally" from Mexico.

He added the sale of cultural heritage items should be discontinued worldwide, and urged would-be buyers: "Don’t become accomplices of criminals, don’t act like criminals."

Lopez Obrador also criticized Austria for holding on to a centuries-old Aztec feather crown believed to have belonged to Emperor Moctezuma (1502-1520) despite repeated calls for its repatriation.

In recent years, Mexico has been trying to recover artefacts in the hands of private collectors around the world, with only partial success.

To date, it has managed to recover some 6,000 artefacts taken from the country, according to Lopez Obrador.

As well as calling for artworks to be returned, Mexico has accused major European fashion houses of cultural appropriation for lifting native designs for their clothes.

It is part of an ongoing debate over the ethics of cultural artefacts held by museums and private owners in former colonial powers, and questions about how they were acquired in the first place.