KUWAIT CITY, 8 July 2004 — An influential member of Kuwait’s ruling family and former minister yesterday expressed concern the United States may coerce the emirate into making territorial concessions to Iraq as part of a new regional order.
“I am afraid that Iraq’s new order may be arranged at our expense. The Americans may impose it on us,” former Oil Minister Sheikh Saud Nasser Al-Sabah told Al-Seyassah daily in an interview.
“I am afraid that someone may come tomorrow to say that the issue of Umm Qasr (port) and Bubiyan and Warba (islands) needs to be reviewed. This time the request will not come from Iraq. It may come from the Americans,” the former official said.
“Now, we should expect the unexpected, because (major) events may take place in this region,” added the pro-American former official who was Kuwait’s ambassador to Washington during the 1990-91 Iraqi invasion and the Gulf War.
Apart from laying claim to Kuwait as part of Iraq, successive Iraqi leaders, including Saddam Hussein, had repeatedly asked the emirate to lease the two uninhabited islands of Warba and Bubiyan to expand Iraq’s coastal area.
The border port of Umm Qasr is divided between Iraq and Kuwait, which was allocated an additional portion of the area when the United Nations demarcated the frontier between the two countries in 1993.
In January, Mudhar Shawkat, vice president of the Iraqi National Congress headed by Ahmad Chalabi, said that the two Gulf islands of Warba and Bubiyan were essential for Iraq’s economic development. “Iraq’s interests first of all lead us to demand that we should have such a water terminal on the Arabian Gulf,” said Shawkat, whose remarks were strongly condemned in Kuwait.
Iraqi troops invaded Kuwait in August 1990 as Saddam claimed the emirate as part of his country and annexed it, naming it Iraq’s 19th province. A US-led multinational coalition evicted Iraqi troops from Kuwait seven months later.
After serving as Kuwait’s envoy in the United States for a decade, Sheikh Saud was appointed information minister on his return in 1992. He was later moved to the oil portfolio until he resigned in 2001.
Sheikh Saud also expressed fear that President George W. Bush may lose elections later this year, saying this will be catastrophic for Kuwait.
“If the US administration is changed in November, it will be catastrophic. I personally see it as a catastrophe, because Democrats do not understand foreign policy,” he said.
