Kuwaiti POWs in Iraq still "Unsolved:" Kuwaiti SpeakerKuwaiti Parliament Speaker Jasim Mohammad al-Kharafi said here on Monday that Iraq has so far not provided the files of Kuwaiti prisoners of war (POWs) in Iraq, expressing hope that the issue will be resolved as soon as possible.Kharafi held talks in the day with Esmat Abdel-Meguid, secretary general of the Cairo-based Arab League (AL), primarily on the issue of POWs and those missing in action (MIAs), Egypt's state-run Middle East News Agency reported. "The issue is not only a political one but also a humanitarian one," the Kuwaiti speaker was quoted as saying. Relations between Kuwait and Iraq have been strained since Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990, which triggered the Gulf War in 1991 to drive the Iraqi troops out of Kuwait. Kuwait maintains that more than 600 of its own and other countries' nationals disappeared during the Iraqi occupation from August 1990 to February 1991, and that the POWs and MIAs are still being held in Iraq. Iraq said that there had been prisoners, but it lost track of them during an uprising by Shiite Muslims in southern Iraq following the country's retreat from Kuwait. Iraq has so far only submitted files on 68 of those POWs and MIAs. Meanwhile, Baghdad claims that 1,037 Iraqis have disappeared or are being held in Kuwait. The AL chief said that releasing the Kuwaiti POWs and finding MIAs may contribute to the end of Iraq's isolation in the world, adding that the pan-Arab forum is making efforts to consolidate relations among the Arab countries. |
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