Reuters
Arab News
September 29, 2003

Kuwait: Kuwaiti parliamentarians reacted angrily to a US suggestion the country drop demands for billions of dollars in war reparations owed by former foe Iraq, newspapers said yesterday.

US civil administrator for Iraq Paul Bremer said on Friday that out of Iraq’s total debt of $200 billion, Baghdad owed $98 billion in reparations to Kuwait and Saudi Arabia for losses during the 1990-91 Iraqi occupation of Kuwait and the Gulf War.

“This is some kind of (US) pressure on Kuwait … the issue of the reparations is something that concerns the impacted countries and the United Nations,” said MP Yousef Al-Zalzalah in remarks carried by Al-Watan daily yesterday.

“Demanding that Kuwait of its own accord give up its rights is something unacceptable because the reparations are part of the big losses of the tyrannical (Iraqi) invasion.”

Bremer said “it is curious to me to have a country whose (annual) per capita income GDP is about $800 … pay reparations to countries whose per-capita GDP is a factor of 10 times that,” for a war which all Iraqis now in power opposed. Saddam’s forces invaded Kuwait in 1990 and were driven out by US-led multinational coalition in 1991. Iraq also launched missiles into Saudi territory. Baghdad subsequently agreed to pay compensation for damage it caused, and some revenue from Iraq’s UN oil-for-food deal went for payment of reparations.

“If Bremer is so concerned about per capita income he has to demand dropping all of the United States of America debts on poor nations where per capita incomes don’t exceed $30 a year,” MP Daifallah Buramiya told English language daily Arab Times.

Despite some warming of relations between Kuwait and Iraq since the US-led forces toppled Saddam Hussein, bilateral ties remain strained.

“The Iraqi occupation happened, so the past political leadership or the one that follows it must bear responsibility for that occupation,” said Islamist MP Khaled Al-Adwa.

Kuwait took a big risk by opening its air space and land to be the springboard for the US-led forces that deposed Saddam this spring, said MP Walid Al-Tabtabai. “So how can such a (US) call be made?” Tabtabai asked. “We will reject this call which robs the Kuwaiti people of what rightfully belongs to it.”