Kuwait offered $100 million grant to Iraq

An Iraqi official confirmed that Kuwait has approved a grant of $ 100 million to Iraq to support humanitarian projects and reconstruction efforts in areas recovered from IS organization.  The grant is the first Kuwaiti financial assistance to Iraq since the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990.

Officials from the two countries signed the grant agreement in Kuwait on Tuesday, a spokeswoman for Iraq's Reconstruction Fund for Areas Affected by Terrorist Operations said.

"The grant agreement signed today is an encouraging start for further future cooperation between Iraq and Kuwait," the reconstruction fund chief, Mustafa al-Hiti, told Reuters.

The fund aims to rebuild cities and territories recaptured from Islamic State, the ultra-hardline jihadist group, which declared a "caliphate" over parts of Iraq and Syria in 2014. The war with Islamic State escalated as crude prices tumbled, curtailing the Iraqi government budget as it relies almost exclusively on oil sales.

On the other hand, Kuwait has confirmed its readiness to study future options aimed at ensuring that the Iraqi will continue to pay the sum of 4.6 billion dollars in compensation for the losses of the Iraqi aggression in 1990.

The director of the Public Authority for the Assessment of Compensation for Damages Resulting from Iraqi Aggression (PAAC), Khaled Ahmed Almodaf, said that his country positively interacted with the decision taken by the Governing Council of the United Nations Compensation Commission, at its 81st session, on 2 November 2016, which encouraged the Kuwaiti and Iraqi governments to cooperate on future options to ensure that this amount is continued to be paid in favor of Kuwait.

He stressed that his country has agreed more than once to postpone the payments of payments, taking into account the difficult economic and security conditions in Iraq.