UN awards Kuwait $1bn from Iraq invasion fund

A United Nations body that handles war reparations for Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait said Thursday it had handed over a further $1.07 billion (810 million euros) to the emirate. The payment, related to damage to oil facilities and resulting financial losses, brings to $42.3 billion the total sum handed out by the United Nations Compensation Commission (UNCC). Some $10.1 billion awarded by the UNCC to a string of claimants still remains to be paid out. In addition to Kuwait, more than 100 governments and international organisations have been allocated funds by the UNCC for distribution to 1.5 million successful claimants. The UNCC was set up by the U.N. Security Council in 1991, the year that a U.S.-led coalition drove then Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's forces out of Kuwait. Its funds are drawn from a U.N.-mandated levy of five percent on Iraqi oil exports, whose continued existence has come in for criticism given that Saddam was ousted in 2003 in the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.