Iraq yesterday renewed a call to foreign creditors to cancel about US$60 billion in debts and asked that compensation payments imposed after former president Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait be scrapped.
Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki made the call at an international conference convened in Stockholm to assess progress in a five-year plan to rebuild Iraq.
“Iraq is not a poor country. It possesses tremendous human and material resources, but the debts of Iraq ... which we inherited from the dictator hamper the reconstruction process,” Maliki told the conference.
PHOTO: AP
“We are looking forward to the brother countries writing off its [Iraq’s] debts, which are a burden on the Iraqi government,” he said, a pointed reference to Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, which are Iraq’s biggest Arab creditors.sThe foreign ministers of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait were not present at yesterday’s conference, with junior officials representing both countries. A member of the Iraqi delegation said they were disappointed by the foreign ministers’ absence.
US State Department estimates show about US$66.5 billion of Iraq’s US$120.2 billion in foreign debt has been forgiven.
More than half of the outstanding debt is owed to Gulf Arab states, mainly Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.
Arab League chief Amr Moussa backed Maliki’s call for debt relief saying: “I call upon everybody, including the Arab countries, to accelerate this issue.”
Iraq is pushing for an end to the billions of dollars it pays in compensation for the 1990 invasion of Kuwait.
At present it is required to set aside 5 percent of its oil revenues, which Iraq says will amount to US$3.5 billion this year.
The Stockholm meeting is the first annual review of the International Compact with Iraq agreed in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh last year, which committed Iraq to implement reforms in exchange for greater international support.
Opening the conference, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon praised the Iraqi government for making “notable progress” in meeting economic, political and security benchmarks set at last year’s conference.
Maliki told the conference his government was pushing ahead with plans to hold provincial elections in October, despite the top US commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus, saying last week that November was a more likely date.
In a 75-page progress report to the conference, Iraq stressed it was not looking for money from the international community but for technical help to get its economy back on its feet after decades of wars and sanctions.
Meanwhile, at least 16 people were killed and 18 injured yesterday when a suicide bomber attacked police volunteers near the main police department in Sinjar in Nineveh Province.
The bomber, wearing an explosive vest, blew himself up targeting the police recruits in Sinjar, local police sources told the Voices of Iraq news agency.
The death toll was expected to rise as some people were very seriously injured, said the director of Sinjar hospital, Kifah Mahmud.
HOSTAGES REMEMBERED
In related news, relatives of five British civilian contractors held hostage in Iraq marked the first anniversary of their captivity yesterday.
The men, who worked for a US management consultancy and a Canadian security firm, were abducted in an audacious raid on the Finance Ministry in Baghdad by up to 40 gunmen, some dressed in Iraqi police uniforms.
In interviews and statements yesterday, relatives told of their agony of missing their loved ones.
The Foreign Office has imposed a virtual news blackout on the case, saying that sensitive negotiations for the men’s release are going on behind the scenes.
The kidnappers, who call themselves the Islamic Shiite Resistance in Iraq, have released two videos of the men over the past 12 months.
The Foreign Office said it did not want anything to get in the way of its negotiations, through third parties, to get the men released.
Four people jailed in the landmark Hong Kong national security trial of "47 democrats" accused of conspiracy to commit subversion were freed today after more than four years behind bars, the second group to be released in a month. Among those freed was long-time political and LGBTQ activist Jimmy Sham (岑子杰), who also led one of Hong Kong’s largest pro-democracy groups, the Civil Human Rights Front, which disbanded in 2021. "Let me spend some time with my family," Sham said after arriving at his home in the Kowloon district of Jordan. "I don’t know how to plan ahead because, to me, it feels
Poland is set to hold a presidential runoff election today between two candidates offering starkly different visions for the country’s future. The winner would succeed Polish President Andrzej Duda, a conservative who is finishing his second and final term. The outcome would determine whether Poland embraces a nationalist populist trajectory or pivots more fully toward liberal, pro-European policies. An exit poll by Ipsos would be released when polls close today at 9pm local time, with a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points. Final results are expected tomorrow. Whoever wins can be expected to either help or hinder the
North Korea has detained another official over last week’s failed launch of a warship, which damaged the naval destroyer, state media reported yesterday. Pyongyang announced “a serious accident” at Wednesday last week’s launch ceremony, which crushed sections of the bottom of the new destroyer. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un called the mishap a “criminal act caused by absolute carelessness.” Ri Hyong-son, vice department director of the Munitions Industry Department of the Party Central Committee, was summoned and detained on Sunday, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported. He was “greatly responsible for the occurrence of the serious accident,” it said. Ri is the fourth person
The collapse of the Swiss Birch glacier serves as a chilling warning of the escalating dangers faced by communities worldwide living under the shadow of fragile ice, particularly in Asia, experts said. Footage of the collapse on Wednesday showed a huge cloud of ice and rubble hurtling down the mountainside into the hamlet of Blatten. Swiss Development Cooperation disaster risk reduction adviser Ali Neumann said that while the role of climate change in the case of Blatten “still needs to be investigated,” the wider impacts were clear on the cryosphere — the part of the world covered by frozen water. “Climate change and
RSS