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Egypt, UN Discuss Ways to Seek Release of Kuwaiti POWs
Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher held talks Wednesday with a U.N. envoy on ways of seeking release of more than 600 people missing after Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990.
Yuli Vorontsov, UN coordinator for the return of missing Kuwaitis and nationals of third countries, described as "very hard" his mission to help release 615 Kuwaiti prisoners of war (POW) and other detainees, who are believed to be imprisoned by Iraqi forces.
"My mission is simply to find those POWs and help repatriate them. It is a very hard work," said Vorontsov after talks with Maher, quoted by Egypt's state-run Middle East News Agency.
He said that he has asked Maher to help contact with the Iraqi government to facilitate his mission in Iraq, as Baghdad does not recognize his mission and he thus has not been allowed to visit the country since he took the post in February 2000.
The U.N. envoy has also been asking other Arab countries to help convince Baghdad to accept his mission. He has visited some Gulf countries and will soon fly to Jordan to seek support.
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 those missing in action (MIA) are still being held in Iraq.
Iraq said that there had been prisoners, but that 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 submitted files on 68 of those POWs and MIAs. Meanwhile, Baghdad claims that following the Gulf War, triggered by Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, 1,037 Iraqis have disappeared and are being held in Kuwait.
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