Kuwaiti prime minister visits Baghdad
Iraq and Kuwait have been making progress in mending ties frayed by Saddam Hussain’s invasion in 1990
Baghdad: Kuwaiti Prime Minister Shaikh Jaber Mubarak Al Sabah landed in Iraq on Wednesday for a surprise one-day visit as the two countries look to cement improving ties and resolve a swathe of long-running disputes.
Sabah was met at Baghdad airport by his Iraqi counterpart, Nuri Al Maliki, and later held talks with Al Maliki and Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari.
Along with signing agreements on the economy, education, culture and the environment, Kuwait and Iraq focused on unresolved disagreements stemming from Saddam Hussain’s 1990 invasion of the Gulf emirate.
Iraq and Kuwait have been making progress in mending ties frayed by Saddam Hussain’s invasion in 1990.
“All that we have achieved is the result of work over the last 10 years, in meetings and negotiations,” Zebari said in a news conference with Sabah. “From last year, until now, the relationship has taken a big step thanks to the will of the two countries to solve all these issues.”
Many outstanding issues have been resolved in recent months as Iraq has sought to be removed from Chapter 7 of the UN Charter, which allows for sanctions ranging from economic measures to an arms embargo.
Kuwait has so far received about $30 billion (22.6 billion euros) in war reparations, with the remaining $11 billion set to be paid off in 2015. Iraq currently puts five percent of all its oil revenues in a UN-managed fund that makes periodic payments to Kuwait.
In February, an Iraqi Airways flight landed in Kuwait for the first time since Saddam’s invasion.
The most recent dispute between the two countries however was that relating to rival ports being built by the two countries in close proximity to each other. Kuwait’s Mubarak Al Kabir port, being built on Bubyan island is just a few kilometres away from Iraq’s planned Grand Al Faw port and is expected by Iraqi researchers to result in a 60 per cent drop in traffic to Umm Qasr, Iraq’s only deep water port. However both Iraqi and Kuwaiti officials have played down the threat of the Kuwaiti port to Iraq, and Kuwait announced in December 2012 that the two countries had “closed the chapter” on the dispute.
