Sarajevo - Bosnia rejected an offer to have a precious 14th-century relic, the Jewish manuscript known as the Sarajevo Haggadah, exhibited in New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art because of financial difficulties, officials said Wednesday.

“We do not have a positive response for the Metropolitan,” Ljiljana Sevo of the Bosnian Commission for Historic Monuments told reporters.

The relic could not be loaned out because the National Museum in Sarajevo, where it is kept, closed its doors indefinitely last year due to a lack of funding, Sevo said.

As a result, the commission has decided to hold off on all international partnerships until the situation at the museum was “normalised”, she added.

Jakob Finci, head of Bosnia's Jewish community, had informed local officials that the Metropolitan had offered to put the Haggadah on display until the Sarajevo museum re-opened.