a settlement announced this month that calls for the statue's return to Cambodia without compensation.

Sotheby's argued in court filings that the Belgian businessman had acquired it legitimately in 1975 and that there were no grounds under Cambodian or U.S. law to force the auction house and its client to give it up.

The Norton Simon took a different approach, based on past cordial relations with Cambodia's cultural authorities. Without a suit having been filed, museum representatives went to Phnom Penh for discussions earlier this year. Despite what the museum characterized as "a good-faith difference of views" with Cambodia over whether the Norton Simon was legally obliged to send the statue back, its leaders concluded that there were special reasons to send it home.

"While there are extremely strong legal argumentsfor why we could defeat a claim, and while the Cambodian law is ambiguous at best, in this circumstance it seems appropriate and in keeping with the positive relationship the Norton Simon has had with Cambodia over the years to gift the statue to them," said Luis Li, an attorney for the museum. "They have a very specific archaeological context they want to create, and I think the Norton Simon was moved by that."

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Norton Simon, who founded the museum in 1974 when he took over the financially depleted Pasadena Art Museum, began collecting Indian and Southeast Asian antiquities on his 1971 honeymoon in India after marrying actress Jennifer Jones, adding them to the brilliant collection of European art he'd already amassed.

In its announcement earlier this month that it