Els,
I notice that in Dec 2012 Ethiopia submitted a revised Tentative List which includes "Melka Kunture and Balchit". This has been recorded on this Web site with a new T List entry. In fact Melka Kunture (MK) is reappearing again among Ethiopia's intended nominations after a long period of absence and also appears under "dead sites" !! Might it not be more accurate to bring the original nomination details back in with its earlier history and the latest event being "2012 Added to Ethiopia's T List with the addition of Balchit"? The only difference between the orginal nomination and the new T List entry is the addition of the nearby site of Balchit from which Obsidina was obtained by the inhabitants of MK
In the Country section you have its historical entry with the following text "Melka Kontoure has been nominated in the past to qualify for inclusion in the World Heritage List, but doesn't feature anymore on the country's current Tentative List."
In fact that "history" is not quite correct anyway in that it states "1978 Tentative list. Submitted as tentative site by State Party". There was no "Tentative List" as long ago as 1978. The original Melka Kunture nomination had the very early id No 13 and was first dealt with as follows at the Sept 1978 2nd WHC in Washington -
"The Committee further decided to defer consideration of all other nominations listed in
document CC-78/CONF.010/7 until its third session. All these nominations, as well as those received after the Bureau meeting and listed in document CC-78/CONF.010/7 for which it had been impossible to complete the technical review, translation and transmission to all States members of the Committee in time before the second session would be transmitted to the Bureau for examination prior to their consideration by the Committee at its next session."
At the 1979 Bureau meeting in Paris in May it was recorded that Melka Kunture (and several other nominations) should be deferred for further documentation to be provided - as a result it was not considered at the 1979 WHC in Luxor (only sites passed forward by the Bureau were considered)
After another year of delay in 1980, the 1981 Bureau recorded for Melka Kunture and 3 other Ethiopian sites - "On the recommendation of ICOMOS these 4 nominations were deferred until the list of nominations which Ethiopia intends to nominate has been received"
As far as I know, nothing more was heard of MK until its addition to Etrhiopia's T List in 2012.
In fact I visited the site in 2008 and it had received a lot of development by Italian archaeologists who had prepared a nice little museum as well - so i suspect that Ethiopia had merely been awaiting the completion of such activities. I will try to get round to doing a review | 
