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RE: [casi] Bush's speech - compensations



> In particular, there was an emphasis on compensations due to Kuwait by
> Iraq, and how a lacking payment of these (ie. a non-compliant to *all* SC
> resolutions) would not in itself justify a war.  The issue was presented
> as if no compensations had ever been paid.  Can Casi experts brief us on
> how much has been paid out and how much still needs to flow to Kuwait ?

Hi Dan,

The website that explains these issues is www.uncc.ch or www.unog.ch/uncc.
The page containing up to date information is at
http://www.unog.ch/uncc/status.htm.  It shows that, as of 23 July, $43.6
billion in compensation had been granted, with $15.5 billion of that paid.
$181 billion in claims remain to be resolved.  The simplest approach to
estimating how much of that will be granted is to apply the past award rate
(42.6/142.4 approx .3) to the outstanding claims.  This produces a figure of
$54 billion.

I don't know how much of that has been paid to Kuwaitis and Kuwaiti firms.
Not all claimants, of course, are Kuwaiti: anyone who suffered damages from
the Gulf War (from migrant workers in Kuwait to agriculturalists in Israel
to large petroleum companies) can and have.

Failure to pay these is not possible in a strict sense as 25% of Iraq's oil
revenues are deducted by the UN to do so.  The Iraqi government has no
opportunity to withhold revenue, other than by reducing its oil sales.  In
what seems to me to be the underreported tragedy of the year in Iraq, these
have fallen in half, in part due to the US and UK hard line on oil pricing.

Best wishes,

p.s. in return for answering this, we should have you answer the earlier
question about nuclear bomb tests.

Colin Rowat

work | Room 406, Department of Economics | The University of Birmingham |
Birmingham, B15 2TT, UK | web.bham.ac.uk/c.rowat | (+44/0) 121 414 3754 |
(+44/0) 121 414 7377 (fax) | c.rowat@bham.ac.uk

personal | (+44/0) 7768 056 984 (mobile) | (+44/0) 7092 378 517 (fax) |
(707) 221 3672 (US fax) | c.rowat@espero.org.uk


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