Associated Press, Seattle Post-Intelligencer
July 7, 2004

Baghdad: Iraq’s massive debt could badly hinder efforts to rebuild the nation’s economy, its finance minister warned Wednesday.

“Iraq’s external debt represents a challenge to the financial policy of Iraq and a heavy burden, which its economy cannot afford,” Finance Minister Adel Abdel-Mahdi told a news conference.

Iraq’s debt is roughly $120 billion. The United States is pushing for a significant reduction in the debt to allow Iraq’s ravaged economy to heal.

Abdel-Mahdi said that some countries expressed a willingness to forgive the Iraqi debt, though he declined to specify which countries.

He added, however, that the country still intended to pay war reparations to victims of Iraq’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait “despite the fact that the Iraqi people were not responsible for Saddam’s deeds.”