This NY Times article reports on the further decoding of the Neanderthal genome:

Scientists in Germany Draft Neanderthal Genome.
By NICHOLAS WADE
Published: February 12, 2009
"Possessing the Neanderthal genome raises the possibility of bringing Neanderthals back to life. Dr. George Church, a leading genome researcher at the Harvard Medical School, said Thursday that a Neanderthal could be brought to life with present technology for about $30 million."
...
"When the full Neanderthal genome is in hand, could it be made to produce the living creature its information specifies? Ethical considerations aside, Dr. Pääbo said, Neanderthals could not be generated with existing technology. Dr. Church of Harvard disagreed. He said he would start with the human genome, which is highly similar to that of Neanderthals, and change the few DNA units required to convert it into the Neanderthal version.
"This could be done, he said, by splitting the human genome into 30,000 chunks about 100,000 DNA units in length. Each chunk would be inserted into bacteria and converted to the Neanderthal equivalent by changing the few DNA units in which the two species differ. The changed lengths of DNA would then be reassembled into a full Neanderthal genome. To avoid ethical problems, this genome would be inserted not into a human cell but into a chimpanzee cell.
...
"Dr. Church acknowledged that ethical views on such an experiment would vary widely. But bringing a Neanderthal to birth, he said, would satisfy the human desire to communicate with other intelligences."
http://tierneylab.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/13/why-not-bring-a-neanderthal-to-life/

Perhaps Dr. Pääbo should recall that famous statement of Arthur C. Clarke:

"When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong."

I also like the statement Dr. Church makes in the article that echoes what I said before that bringing back the Neanderthal could give us some understanding about communicating with other intelligences.
Here's another NY Times article that's in favor of the idea:

Why Not Bring a Neanderthal to Life?
By John Tierney
February 13, 2009, 11:30 am
"So why not do it? Why not give Harvard’s George Church the money he says could be used to resurrect a Neanderthal from DNA?
"I’m bracing for a long list of objections from the world’s self-appointed keepers of bioethics, who must see this new Neanderthal issue as a research bonanza. Think of the conferences to plan, the books to publish, the donors to alarm! I can imagine an anti-Neanderthal alliance between the religious right and the religious left, like James Dobson and Jeremy Rifkin — what I like to call the holier-than-thou coalition opposed to new biological technologies.
"But I’m afraid I can’t see the problem. If we discovered a small band of Neanderthals hidden somewhere, we’d do everything to keep them alive, just as we try to keep alive so many other endangered populations of humans and animals — including man-biting mosquitoes and man-eating polar bears. We’ve also spent lots of money reintroducing animals into ecosystems from which they had vanished. Shouldn’t be at least as solicitous to our fellow hominids?"
http://tierneylab.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/13/why-not-bring-a-neanderthal-to-life/

The ethical problems of bringing back a Neanderthal are explored in a classic Isaac Asimov story, though in this case by time travel, "The Ugly Little Boy":

The Ugly Little Boy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ugly_Little_Boy

Bob Clark