UN-Truth

Four governments who are not particularly needy are to receive nearly half a billion dollars in compensation from Iraq’s oil revenues, paid out by the UN Compensation Commission.

Kuwait alone will receive over $388 million dollars.

Saudi Arabia is to receive nearly $40 million.

Turkey will get some $22 million.

And the USA will be handed a neat $20 million.

The payments are being processed now. [These are not the only compensation payments --they are just the most recent -- that these governments have received.]

UPDATE: Just to put this into perspective, new research just published by the Institute for National Security Studies, in Tel Aviv, Israel, shows that as a result of price rices in recent months and more, the income of major oil-producing countries has risen dramatically. INSS researcher Shmuel Even has written a report entitled “The Third Wave: Strategic Implications of the Surge in Oil Prices”, in which he states that “The most prominent example is Saudi Arabia, whose income in 2006 amounted to about $194 billion, 2.8 times higher than in 1996 and 5.9 times higher than in 1986 (in real terms). In 2006, Saudi Arabia posted a $95 billion surplus in its current balance of payments account, while Kuwait has a $50 billion surplus and Iran’s surplus was $14 billion”.

The report contains an interesting comparison of oil prices and production levels over the last thirty years: in 1976, pre-revolutionary Iran earned $22 billion from oil exports, while Saudi Arabia took in just over $38 billion. In 2007, Iran earned $68 billion, while Saudi Arabia earned $222 billion. In 1976, Kuwait and Iraq each earned a little over $9 billion; in 2007, Kuwait earned $63 billion (just a little less than Iran), while Iraq sold $33 billion — and yet still has to pay compensation to much bigger earners Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, among others.

Anyway, the just-announced compensation payment won’t go very far to relieving the U.S. of its massive daily expenses needed to maintain a rather large military mission in Iraq, following its 2003 invasion to depose Saddam Hussein, and a subsequent U.S. occupation of Iraq. During its occupation of Iraq, the U.S. urged other countries to cancel the massive Iraqi debt that had accumulated since the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war. [Because there was never a decision that Iraq was the aggressor in the Iran-Iraq war -- due to U.S. anger at Iran for seizing its embassy and diplomats after the 1979 revolution -- there was never any question of compensation or reparations for Iran.]

Iraq’s oil revenues have now financed nearly $23,000,000 billion U.S. dollars in compensation for its 1990 invasion and subsequent occupation of Kuwait.

Filed under: Iraq, UN Security Council, United Nations