Friday, December 11, 1998 Published at 13:33 GMT
Bid to save Leaning Tower of Pisa
The tower began to lean immediately after construction
Attempts to implement a new plan to safeguard one of the world's most famous landmarks - the Leaning Tower of Pisa - have been delayed by bad weather.
Heavy rain prevented engineers from beginning the operation to attach steel "suspenders" to the tower.
The engineer overseeing the work, Paolo Heiniger, said the two sets of 50-millimeter thick cables had been moved to the base of the 12th-century tower.
The last bid to save the tower, in 1995, actually made things worse - it lurched forward suddenly during excavations around its base.
This time the experts are taking no chances. They have designed a kind of safety belt for the 800-year-old landmark.
Once they are in place, soil will be siphoned out from under its raised north side.
This will cause the tower to slip back slightly, into a more upright position - or that at least is the theory.
Finally, the concrete ring around its base will be widened, with 10 steel cables anchoring the tower to the ground.
Worries over plan
But the international experts behind the project insist that the tower will not survive without it. They say it could collapse completely within 20 years.
There is no question of trying to straighten the tower altogether - the tilt is what guarantees its appeal. This plan aims merely at a correction of half a degree.
Trying to achieve even this much will take years but if it works the experts say it will safeguard the tower for centuries to come.