An art exhibition that has become a pawn in the diplomatic game between London and the Kremlin could now go ahead after the British Government agreed to fast-track legislation to appease Moscow.

Its fate looked sealed when Roskultura, the Russian state culture agency, said that it could not accept guarantees offered by British ministers about the security of the artworks and formally cancelled the show, which is scheduled for the Royal Academy of Arts in London in five weeks’ time.

However, in an extraordinary gesture indicative of the show’s importance to relations between the two countries, the Government today announced that it will fast-track part of a new Act which it believes will satisfy the Russians.

James Purnell, the Culture Secretary, said that a provision of the Tribunals, Courts and Enforcement Act 2007, which has been approved by Parliament but is not due to come into force until February would become effective after Parliament returns on or about January 7, in time to protect the artworks.

Ostensibly, the dispute has been a legal one about the security of more than 120 paintings including masterpieces by Matisse, Van Gogh and Kandinsky, selected for the Royal Academy exhibition From Russia: French and Russian Master Paintings 1870 – 1925 from Moscow and St Petersburg.

Several of the paintings, which all belong to Russia’s four leading state museums have been the subject of legal claims in the past, from descendants of the collectors who owned them before they were nationalised in the Revolution and from businesses who claim that the Russian state owes them money.

Vladimir Titov, the Deputy Foreign Minister, said yesterday that there was no political motive behind the cancellation.

However, the timing of Russia’s complaints about the security provision for the pictures, set against a backdrop of deteriorating diplomatic relations between the two countries, elevated the negotiations to the highest government levels.

A spokesman for the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) in London said that Mr Purnell and David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, had worked “very closely” on trying to resolve the matter.

He added that the department had received written assurances this morning from Mikhail Shvydkoi, the head of Roskultura, that bringing forward the provision of the new Act would appease his concerns and allow the paintings to be sent to Britain “immediately”.

There has been no formal response from Moscow but the DCMS is confident that the show will go ahead.

That looked unlikely earlier today when Mr Shvydkoi said that written assurances guaranteeing the safety of the loaned paintings from Mr Purnell and Margaret Hodge, the Culture Minister, were “impossible to accept as sufficient”.

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