John Taylor, the US Treasury undersecretary for international affairs, told a conference in Washington last week that Iraq won't be able to start repaying debt until at least the end of 2004.
In January, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington policy institute, said estimates of Iraq's foreign debt ranged from a US Department of Energy figure of US$62.2 billion to a World Bank estimate of US$127.7 billion. The latest CIA estimate is US$120 billion.
The strategy center estimated unpaid Gulf War claims at US$199 billion and put the sum of debt and war claims at US$326 billion. Of the unresolved claims from its 1990 invasion of Kuwait, Iraq may end up owing only about US$40 billion, according to the UN Compensation Commission, the agency processing payments.
Typically, final compensation is far less than original demands.
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