NOT AN INCH TAKEN … NOR AN INCH OF ENCROACHMENT ALLOWED – Kuwait rejects claims by Iraqi MPs

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KUWAIT CITY, Feb 2, (Agencies): Kuwait and Iraq might witness a political crisis as Iraqi lawmakers challenged the decision of the Iraqi Cabinet concerning navigation activities in Khor Abdullah — the border waterway between these two countries.

A report published on gulfnews.com Thursday revealed that the Iraqi lawmakers accused the government of surrendering the maritime border to Kuwait and others who defended it. In 2013, the two countries agreed on a deal regulating the use of Khor Abdullah and referred their agreement to the United Nations hoping it would end one of the thorniest issues remaining from the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in August 1990.

The two countries said they were committed to the agreement governing their maritime relations based on the United Nations resolutions, specifically Resolution 833, in addition to facilitating the passage of ships and traffic fl ow in the channel.

The Iraqi prime minister’s spokesperson said that the government was “obliged to implement the agreement on Khor Abdullah Canal with Kuwait” and “cannot withdraw from this obligation without Kuwaiti consent.” In a press statement, Saad Al-Hadithi disclosed that the Iraqi Parliament “approved in its previous term the endorsement and ratification of the Maritime Agreement in Khor Abdullah in 2012.” Al-Hadithi said the outgoing Iraqi Cabinet, headed by Nouri Al Maliki, endorsed the border demarcation between the two countries, including the Maritime Law. “The current Cabinet, acting on previous endorsements and commitments, directed to complete the engineering questions according to UN resolutions,” the spokesperson explained.

Meanwhile, Kuwait’s Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister Khalid Al-Jarallah dismissed allegations by some Iraqi lawmakers that Kuwait was carving out parts of Iraqi territory for itself. “Kuwait did not take a single inch of Iraqi territory and does not accept at the same time that anyone encroaches on any inch of its own territory,” Al-Jarallah told the media. He deplored the allegations and the MPs’ accusations that Kuwait seized Khor Abdullah, stressing there were no new developments regarding the issue. “Kuwait remains fully committed to the agreement with Iraq regarding the maritime border demarcation Resolution 833. Kuwait will not alter geographic facts in the area, and I affirm that Kuwait did not go beyond its borders or seize any inch of Iraqi land,” Al-Jarallah asserted.

Kuwait wanted to implement the agreement during a meeting of senior officials from the two countries on Jan 24-27 to organize the technical foundations for maritime activities in Khor Abdullah, he added. “We agreed with the Iraqis on several points related to navigation, and the two countries are set to benefit from the agreement. Any claim that Kuwait wants to take over the waterway is baseless, lacks credibility and does not reflect facts. Such claims can be made only by people who do not wish to see closer relations between Kuwait and Iraq and want to harm both countries,” Al-Jarallah disclosed. He was quick to add though that Kuwait has no intention to make an official protest “because the claims were not made by the Iraqi government.” Resolution 833 stipulates that “through the demarcation process the Commission was not reallocating territory between Kuwait and Iraq, but it was simply carrying out the technical task necessary to demarcate for the first time the precise coordinates of the boundary set out in the ‘Agreed Minutes between the State of Kuwait and the Republic of Iraq regarding the Restoration of Friendly Relations, Recognition and Related Matters’ signed by them on Oct 4, 1963.”

The resolution said that the “task was carried out in the special circumstances following Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait and pursuant to resolution 687 (1991) and the Secretary-General’s report for implementing paragraph 3 of that resolution.” Khor Abdullah is a narrow waterway that separates Iraqi and Kuwaiti shores off Kuwait’s Bubiyan Island and leads to Iraq’s Umm Qasr port and other smaller ports. Iraq in 1973 laid claim to the island of Bubiyan and amassed troops on the border.

In the 1980s, then President Saddam Hussain demanded Kuwait lease the island to Iraq. In 2007, Kuwait began construction on Mubarak Al-Kabir, a new megaport on the island of Bubiyan, but Iraq raised objections to it in May 2011, a month after Kuwait laid the foundation stone. Baghdad said it was concerned that the Kuwaiti plan for the container port would strangle its shipping lanes in the waterway, interfere with navigation and cause a slump in business at its only existing deepwater port facility at Umm Qasr. Kuwait, however, has insisted the port will not affect Iraq. An Iraqi militant group had previously threatened to target firms working on the port project.

In 2013, the two countries reached a navigation agreement regulating navigation in Khor Abdullah and presented a copy to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. In a related development, Turkey’s Anadolu Agency reported on its website — aa.com.tr — that hundreds have protested in Basra Province against the 2013 maritime deal. “The canal is Iraqi,” the protestors shouted. “We will not relinquish it to Kuwait”. On Tuesday, demonstrators marched towards the canal from Basra’s provincial council building, where they called on the government to cancel the deal, which was signed in 2013 by Iraq’s Prime Minister then and incumbent Vice-President Nuri al-Maliki. Located between Iraq’s Al-Faw peninsula and the Kuwaiti island of Bubiyan, the canal is now an estuary. Once, however, it had been the point where the Euphrates and Tigris rivers emptied into the Arabian Gulf. Although it was signed four years ago, the deal came back into the spotlight last week after the Iraqi Cabinet began allocating funds for its implementation.

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