Western Countries Cancel Iraqi Debt, Gulf Countries Don’t
The Iraqi Finance Ministry has sent several messages to the Arab countries, notably Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, confirming Baghdad’s readiness to hold talks to settle the Iraqi debt. However, Finance Ministry director-general finance Muhammad Al-Hariri has noted bitterly, “We were expecting, for some time, that these states would resolve the issue and follow the path of several other countries around the world that have cancelled the debt due them from Iraq, but the Arab countries have remained bystanders.” He added that the attitude of the Gulf states is “politically motivated, because some of these countries do not recognize the new changes in Iraq.”
The Iraqi daily Al-Da’wa, issued by Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki’s political party of the same name, has been far more explicit in its criticism of the Gulf countries for their refusal to cancel Iraqi debts. In an article entitled “Iraq Is Not Obliged to Pay Odious Debts,” Rassim Qassim writes that most of the debts accrued by Iraq were “the result of actions by the previous dictatorial and unconstitutional regime, and they are primarily in the form of damages sustained by countries during the invasion and occupation of Kuwait or the result of wars and crises that led to the isolation that regime…” When that regime fell, writes Qassim, “it was assumed that countries which had opposed the previous regime and its programs would drop the odious [illegitimate] debt, and they are now asking the suffering Iraqi people to bear the responsibility of the actions of the despot [Saddam Hussein.]”
Qassim goes on to say that “the new Iraq - with its elected constitutional government and its democratic institutions - is not obliged to pay these debts and it is not obliged to acknowledge them… The civilized world and, specifically, Europe, has responded to the Paris Club, which cancelled 80% of the odious debts, and the European Union is trying to cancel the rest and open a new page with emerging Iraq. The international community has begun to view Iraq in a different pe