Baghdad pays Kuwait another $490 mn in war reparations

Kuwait has received additional reparations of almost $500 million for Iraq's 1990 invasion, the Iraqi embassy in Kuwait said.

"Iraq on October 26 paid Kuwait $490 million, and it will work to pay off what is left in reparations due for the year of 2022, approximately $629 million," the embassy said in a statement issued on Monday.

Baghdad has paid around $50 billion in reparations over the last three decades.

Iraqi forces under then-dictator Saddam Hussein invaded oil-rich Kuwait on August 2, 1990, sparking international condemnation. They occupied the Gulf state for seven months before they were pushed out by a US-led international coalition in the first Gulf War early in 1991.

In 2018, Baghdad paid the first war reparations to Kuwait since 2014, when there was a pause in payments due to a security crisis in Iraq where the Islamic State group of jihadists took over large areas of the country.

But it had asked for an extension for the final $3.8 billion because of its worst fiscal crisis in years during the coronavirus pandemic that brought a collapse in oil prices.

While Kuwait and Iraq now have civil relations, issues remain over borders and the repatriation of bodies.