Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi arrived in Kuwait yesterday on a historic visit just two days before the 14th anniversary of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein's invasion of this small oil-rich state.
Iraqi and Kuwaiti flags flew side by side and both national anthems played as Allawi was met at the airport by Kuwaiti Prime Minister Sheik Sabah Al-Ahmed Al-Sabah.
Allawi's visit was the first of an Iraqi prime minister since the 1990-1991 Gulf crisis. Iraqi Vice President Ibrahim al-Jaafari visited Kuwait earlier this week, and other Iraqi officials have been here since the fall of Saddam and the resumption of ties between the neighbors.
Allawi and Kuwaiti officials declined to speak to the press at the airport, but the Iraqi prime minister said that he considered his visit "historic."
After invading on Aug. 2, 1990, Saddam's troops killed more than 400 people, detained hundreds of others, looted the national archives and left some 700 of the country's oil wells in flames or spewing crude before they were forced out by a US-led international coalition in February 1991.
In Lebanon last Monday, Allawi said the anniversary of Iraq's invasion of Kuwait was "bitter." Baghdad "will seek good neighborly and brotherly relations and a policy of noninterference," he said, adding he didn't see "any problem between Iraq and Kuwait in the future."
The US-backed Iraqi prime minister is on a tour of Arab nations aimed at mustering support and cooperation for efforts to bring security to his violence-ravaged country, as well as its economy and postwar reconstruction.
Security is expected to be high on the agenda of his talks in Kuwait, especially after the government recently announced it was investigating four Kuwaitis, some of them teenagers, who crossed or tried to cross into Iraq from Syria for jihad, or holy war, against US forces in Iraq.
Kuwait is a strong ally of Washington and was the launch pad for the invasion of Iraq. However, many of its politically strong Muslim fundamentalists disapprove of the US military presence in their country.
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