Princeton University Art Museum said it will sign an agreement on Oct. 30 to return eight of 15 disputed antiquities to the Italian government. The agreement completes negotiations that began in April 2006 between the Ivy League university in Princeton, New Jersey, and Italy's Ministry of Culture in Rome. The agreement will immediately transfer ownership of the eight objects to Italy, though four of them -- including a painted Greek vase dating from 510-500 B.C. and a painted Apulian vase from southern Italy from 335-325 B.C. -- will remain on loan to the Princeton museum for four years. The accord will allow the university to keep seven antiquities and also receive loans of "works of art of great significance and cultural importance" from the Italian government. In addition, Princeton students will be able to gain access to archeological sites managed by the Italian ministry. "We are pleased with the outcome of our negotiations with the Italian authorities," Susan Taylor, director of Princeton's art museum, said in a press release."This agreement reflects and supports the research and educational mission of the university art museum, enabling us to retain a number of objects, repatriate others that belong to Italy, and have unprecedented access, on a long-term loan basis, to additional material."Princeton spokeswoman Cass Cliatt declined to comment further on why the university agreed to return the objects, citing a confidentiality agreement in place. After Taylor signs the agreement with Italy next week,"we can entertain questions" about the deal, Cliatt said. Yale Settlement The agreement is the latest settlement between a university- affiliated museum and a national government over the ownership of disputed objects in the museum's collection. In September, Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, agreed to return artifacts that Hiram Bingham, an archeologist and Yale professor, excavated from Machu Picchu, Peru, almost a century ago. "With Yale, Princeton and the Getty Museum, you have negotiated agreements that are win-win for each party," said William Pearlstein, a New York-based art lawyer at Golenbock Eiseman Assor Bell & Peskoe LLP."This is another in a series of happy resolutions of these claims."The J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles agreed in August to return 40 disputed artworks to Italy. New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art agreed last year to return 20 works to Italy. Italy began an inquiry into the background of the Princeton museum's antiquities in 2004, the statement said. The university "provided details about several works in its collection" in January 2005, and talks between the two sides began the following year.