Cash-strapped Iraq seeks to delay final $5.75 billion due to Kuwait over 1990 invasion

Iraq is seeking to postpone a final US$4.6 billion (S$5.75 billion) instalment of reparations for its 1990-91 occupation of Kuwait, Finance Minister Hoshiyar Zebari told Reuters, as it faces a cash crisis caused by falling oil prices and war with Islamic State. -- PHOTO: AFP


BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraq is seeking to postpone a final US$4.6 billion (S$5.75 billion) instalment of reparations for its 1990-91 occupation of Kuwait, Finance Minister Hoshiyar Zebari told Reuters, as it faces a cash crisis caused by falling oil prices and war with Islamic State.

Since Iraq was first allowed to resume oil sales nearly two decades ago it has paid funds into a United Nations body overseeing compensation for looting and damage inflicted during Saddam Hussein's seven-month occupation of Kuwait.

More than a million claimants have been paid and nearly all the US$52.4 billion reparations bill has been met through Iraq's annual allocation of 5 percent of crude oil exports to the UN Compensation Commission (UNCC).

But with its economy now set to shrink for the first time since the 2003 US-led invasion toppled Saddam and ended more than a decade of sanctions, Iraq can ill afford to divert a large chunk of the 2015 budget to make that last payment due next year.

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