Gone in seven minutes: art theft in Greece

As if Greek credibility hadn't suffered enough. Now there's word out of Athens that the country's biggest museum-The National Gallery- has failed to safeguard three of its treasured art works (it would have been four but a hasty thief dropped some of the booty making a getaway). An un-known number of art pilferers grabbed Picasso's ''Woman's Head'', a 1939 painting donated by the artist, Mondrian's ''Mill'' (1905), and a religious-themed sketch from Italian painter Guglielmo Caccia. The fourth work targeted was another 1905 Mondrian.

Red-faced security guards explained how they were duped by a purposely-set alarm that was used as a decoy, allowing the crafty thieves to slip in through a door on the balcony. "It all happened in seven minutes,'' said a police source who wished to remain anonymous, as do the suspects presumably. Whether the gang can make crime pay is another matter.

Thieves who stole a couple of other Picassos weren't so lucky when they were caught by Serbian officials last October, a fate that also befell two light-fingered Greeks who were arrested trying to sell a Reubens back in 2001 to undercover agents for roughly a million Euros. Either way, the mental image of money flying out the door is surely one Greek officials will want to erase as soon as possible.