Baghdad: Iraq estimates that it will complete reparations payments to neighbouring Kuwait in 2015 for Saddam Hussain’s 1990 invasion, Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said Thursday.
Kuwait has received about $30 billion in war reparations, out of about $41 billion, a figure decided by a United Nations body after Iraqi troops were driven out of Kuwait in 1991 following a seven-month occupation.
Baghdad pays 5% of its oil and gas revenue into a special UN fund that pays the compensation.
“If we continue at this pace, I think that in 2015, after paying all the war compensation, Iraq will be completely removed from Chapter 7,” Zebari said at a news conference in Baghdad.
He was referring to a section of the UN charter which allows for sanctions ranging from economic measures to an arms embargo.
Iraq and Kuwait have in recent months been taking steps to resolve long-standing disagreements, including asking the UN to start repairing border markers and working to reach a settlement on a dispute between the two countries’ state-run airlines.
