KUWAIT (Agencies): Kuwait said on Saturday that fellow oil exporter Iraq is likely to report a budget surplus this year and should repay its debts. “Iraq’s debt to Kuwait is an old debt ... It has to be paid or Iraq has to pay its interest. These are the rights of the Kuwaiti people,” state news agency KUNA quoted Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammad al-Sabah as saying in a television interview. The debt, estimated at $15-16 billion, represents loans Kuwait made to Baghdad in the Saddam Hussein era, mostly during the 1980-1988 Iraq-Iran war. “The economic situation in Iraq is witnessing a big improvement this year and Iraq will have a large surplus in the budget,” Sheikh Mohammad said, apparently referring to the six-fold rise in oil prices since 2002 which has generated huge revenues for oil exporters.

He said Kuwait would not allow debt repayment to become a burden on Iraq, but reiterated that only the Kuwaiti parliament could write off such debt. Several deputies oppose debt forgiveness as many Kuwaitis are still bitter about Saddam’s 1990 invasion of their country. The United States has, since invading Iraq in 2003 and toppling Saddam, been pressing its Arab allies to forgive Iraq’s debts and restore top-level diplomatic ties. The United Arab Emirates waived all of Iraq’s almost $7 billion debt to the UAE last month. Kuwait named its ambassador to Baghdad last month.

Operation
Meanwhile, Iraqi security forces arrested about 540 gunmen in Diyala governorate within operation (Bashaer Al-Kair), said a statement Saturday. Media spokesman for the Defense Ministry Major General Mohammad Al-Askari said that amongst the 540 gunmen were 42 top Qaeda terrorist network leaders, adding weapons were confiscated during the operation. Meanwhile, Rafe Al-Issawi, undersecretary for Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki, visited Diyala today to follow up on reconstruction efforts there. The government has allocated $100 million to help reconstruction efforts there. On other developments, a tip from a concerned local citizen led the Multi-National Force (MNF) soldiers to a potential vehicle-borne improvised-explosive device before it could detonate in the Adhamiyah district Aug 8.

“Thanks to a concerned citizen who provided the information on a potential VBIED, it was able to be secured without loss or injury to any civilians,” said Maj Byron Sarchet, information operations officer and a spokesperson for the 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division, Multi-National Division – Baghdad. An explosive ordnance disposal team responded and conducted a controlled detonation on the vehicle. Within minutes of the initial detonation, there was a large, secondary explosion that resulted in damage to nearby buildings and vehicles. There were no injuries in either explosion. MNF soldiers will be handing out claims cards to residents whose property was damaged in the explosions.
A 24-year-old suspected al-Qaeda fighter captured in Iraq claims to have kidnapped and killed 16 people, including five women, a senior Iraqi official said on Saturday.

“Our forces captured Jassem al-Khafadji who says he has kidnapped and assassinated 11 men and five women,” Defence Ministry spokesman General al-Askari told reporters. “He then led us to the place where he had buried them.” Khafadji is among some 500 people the military says have been arrested since the launch on July 29 of a major operation in Diyala province aimed at flushing out al-Qaeda fighters who control vast swathes of the countryside. The operation is being carried out by the Iraqi army, supported by the US military. Fed by the Euphrates and Diyala rivers, Diyala was once the granary of Iraq and the country’s orange capital with its lush orchards, but its multi-ethnic population has proven one of the most dangerous to control.

Self-sufficient
Iraq’s army hopes to become fully self-sufficient by mid-2009, the defence minister said on Saturday, the same date by which Baghdad hopes US patrols of Iraqi towns and cities will end.
Iraqi and US negotiators are trying to reach a deal allowing US forces to remain in Iraq when a United Nations mandate expires at the end of 2008.
“We must truly stand on our own two feet. We made a promise to the Iraqi people that we are going to undertake all the tasks of our role by the middle or end of 2009,” Defence Minister General Abdel Qader Jassim told reporters in Baghdad.
As Iraq’s army has grown in confidence, Baghdad has pressed for firm dates for the departure of American forces. Iraq wants to end US patrols of towns and cities by the middle of next year and for all combat troops to leave by October 2010.
Other soldiers would leave a few years later.
In Washington, US Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama on Saturday reiterated his call for ending the Iraq war and urged the Iraqi government to take responsibility for the country’s security.

“It’s time to end the war in Iraq responsibly by asking the Iraqis to take responsibility for their future and to invest in their own country,” Obama said in his weekly radio address.
Obama said that Americans had learned this week that the Iraqi government now had a $79-billion budget surplus thanks to their windfall oil profits.
While this Iraqi money sits in American banks, American taxpayers continue to spend 10 billion dollars a month to defend and rebuild Iraq, the Illinois senator pointed out.
“Our country has spent nearly a trillion dollars in Iraq, even as our schools are underfunded, our roads and bridges are crumbling, and the cost of everything from groceries to a gallon of gas is soaring,” Obama noted.
“Now think for a moment about what we could have done with the hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars that we’ve spent in Iraq,” he continued. “We could have rebuilt American schools and roads and bridges. We could have made historic investments in alternative energy to create millions of American jobs.”

Toll
Meanwhile, the death toll from a blast in a market in the northern Iraqi town of Tal Afar rose to 25 on Saturday, after four of the six dozen people injured died from their wounds, a security official said.
The predominantly ethnic Turkoman town was under an indefinite curfew following Friday’s bombing, according to the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to the speak to the media.
The official, who was familiar with the police investigation, said the blast was carried out by a lone Sunni Turkoman suicide bomber from Tal Afar, whose identity was established after forensic tests on his remains. The bomber had been released from detention four months ago under an amnesty passed by parliament earlier this year, he added.
Initial reports said a parked car was used in the attack.
The bomber may have avoided detection at a checkpoint leading to the busy market by having a man ride with him in the passenger seat, said the official. The passenger got off after the checkpoint, he added, quoting witness reports.

An influential Kurdish member of  the Iraqi parliament on Saturday accused Turkey of undermining the influence Kurds have gained since the fall of the regime of Saddam Hussein in 2003.
“Turkey has manoeuvred to create an anti-Kurdish (Iraqi) parliament,” Mahmoud Othman told a press conference in Sulaimaniyah, one of the main cities of the autonomous Kurdish region in northern Iraq.
“It is behind the adoption of article 24 of the electoral law as it is trying by all means to reduce the gains made by the Kurds after the fall of Saddam Hussein,” he said.
Iraq’s parliament proposed under article 24 of the election bill a deal that will share power equally between Arabs, Kurds and Turkmen in the oil-rich Kirkuk region, a move bitterly opposed by the Kurds, given their numerical superiority.

Remove
Meanwhile, Georgia will remove all of its 2,000 soldiers from Iraq to join the fighting in the breakaway province of South Ossetia as soon as transport can be arranged, the commander said Saturday.
A US military spokesman says the departure of the Georgian contingent — the third largest contributor to coalition forces after the US and Britain — will have “some impact” in the near term but no significant long-term effect on Iraq’s security.
Col Bondo Maisuradze, commander of the Georgia brigade, told The Associated Press that all his troops would be leaving, but he couldn’t say when because transportation arrangements had not been finalized. “All the Georgian guys will be leaving for the homeland,” he said.