(MintPress) — The U.N. panel overseeing claims for damages from victims of Iraq’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait has awarded an additional $1.3 billion to claimants, bringing the total paid thus far to $40.1 billion.
The U.N. Compensation Commission did not disclose the identities of the claimants but said the money would go toward claims involving Kuwait’s oil fields, as well as production and sales losses.
The commission was established by the U.N. Security Council in 1991 and is funded by a 5 percent tax on the export of Iraqi oil. Since its founding, the group has approved $52.4 billion to more than 100 governments and international organizations, making payments every three months.
US backed invasion
In 1990, Iraq invaded Kuwait after the two nations had a dispute over economic and diplomatic issues. Iraq owed its once-ally Kuwait a large sum of money that Iraq had used to finance its war with Iran in the 1980s.
Iraq was unable to afford to pay Kuwait back. Though the nations attempted to work out their issues, disagreements over oil production got in the way and led to the Iraq-Kuwait war and eventually the Gulf War.
Furious that Kuwait refused to decrease oil production, therefore decreasing the price of oil and its ability to make pay back debt, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein invaded the nation on Aug. 2, 1990, and accused Kuwait of illegally pumping oil from Iraqi oil fields.
The U.N. Security Council called for Iraq to withdraw by Jan. 15, 1991, but Hussein refused and let the U.N.’s deadline for peaceful withdrawal lapse.
U.S. troops were already in Saudi Arabia to protect the nation’s oil fields, and after the date for withdrawal lapsed, the U.S. led a massive air war, with the help of other oil-dependent Western nations, to destroy Iraq’s forces and military and civil infrastructure.
It’s thought that the U.N. would have never allowed an Iraqi invasion had the U.S. and Soviet Union not recently become allies. Related to this is that while the U.S. waited for the U.N. deadline to lapse before attacking Iraq, the U.S. waged war three days before the U.N. deadline.
On Jan. 12, 1991, Congress granted President George H. W. Bush “the most explicit and sweeping war-making power given a president in nearly half a century.”
During the war, the U.S. helped liberate Kuwait from the Iraqi invasion, but left Hussein in power in Iraq, even though it was known he was suppressing the majority Shiites and Kurds, who before the war had begun to rebel.
In 1993 the U.S., along with Britain and France, launched several air and cruise-missile strikes against Iraq after learning the nation had plans for retaliation, including assassinating former President George H. W. Bush.
Since the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, which led to the removal of Saddam Hussein from power, Iraq has repeatedly appealed to Kuwait and other countries to waive tens of billions of dollars in compensation and debt payments.