The United Nations released $1.06 billion in Iraqi compensation to Kuwait Thursday in the latest payment of a war reparation scheme that began in 1994. The payment brings the total sum of compensation paid to Kuwait to $33.3 billion. A further $19 billion is due. Most of the latest round went to state and private companies, and governments and international organisations, the UN Compensation Commission said in a statement. Following the 1991 invasion of Kuwait by Saddam Hussein's regime, Iraq is required to put five percent of its oil and gas revenues into the UN reparations fund. Baghdad has called on Kuwait Wednesday to suspend work on a controversial megaport until Iraq is assured its shipping lanes will not be squeezed by the project but Kuwait said work on the project will continue. The $1.1 billion facility, on Kuwait's Bubiyan Island, is scheduled for completion in 2016. Baghdad fears the Mubarak port will compete with its own Faw and Khor Al-Zubair ports and “strangle” Iraq's shipping routes. “The Iraqi government asks the Kuwaiti side to stop work on the Mubarak port until we are assured that Iraqi shipping lanes, and free and safe navigation, will not be affected,” government spokesman Ali Al-Dabbagh said in a statement. “There is no information and data to assure the Iraqi government that its navigation interests will not be damaged” by the project, the statement said. It requested Kuwait to “hand over all information needed by Iraq to ensure that its rights will be preserved.” At a news conference Wednesday, Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said his country would send an expert mission to Kuwait, but did not specify when. He said Kuwait had agreed to receive a mission of experts and officials from several ministries “to find a solution acceptable to both sides.” “We try to resolve the problem through official channels to guarantee Iraq's interests and freedom of navigation,” Zebari said. “We want a positive approach, and do not seek an escalation,” he added. Zebari stressed that relations with Kuwait remained delicate. A Kuwaiti foreign ministry official expressed “dismay” at the “statement made by the spokesman of the Iraqi government, who called on the state of Kuwait to halt work in Mubarak Al-Kabir port project.”
