QUEBEC CITY – U.N. officials decided Thursday to retain the eastern German city of Dresden as a World Heritage Site for now despite earlier warnings that the construction of a bridge endangered its status.

In 2006, the UNESCO World Heritage Committee warned that the planned 2,085-foot-long bridge across the Elbe River would mar the city's skyline and landscape. The committee, which is currently meeting in Quebec City, now says that if construction is not stopped and the damage reversed, the property will be deleted from the World Heritage List in 2009. It remains on a danger list.

The committee decided last year that it would remove Dresden from the list if the bridge were built, but it decided to give Dresden more time in view of legal proceedings under way in Germany.

No site has ever been stripped from the World Heritage List, which identifies over 800 places around the world with “outstanding universal value.”

The committee, part of the Paris-based United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, wants officials to change plans in place to build the bridge across the Elbe to ease traffic in Dresden, often referred to as the Florence of the Elbe for the baroque architecture that gives it a distinctive skyline.

The plans also have raised the ire of environmentalists, who say the bridge would encroach on the habitat of the rare lesser horseshoe bat. A court ruled in November that construction could proceed despite the threat to the bat, but ordered a strict nighttime speed limit of 19 mph to limit disruptions to the bat's habitat.

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