Hmmm ... maybe they could help each other out here ~ link ~ France expected to go into recession in 2012
Related articles ~ Links Iraq and France ... 12/16/2011
France attentive to pending Kuwaiti demands, urges Iraqi progress
Paris, France said on Friday that it was "very attentive" to the unresolved Kuwaiti issues concerning the 1990-1991 Iraqi occupation, in particular painful questions like the Kuwaiti missing and the restitution of property like the national archives and other stolen items, and Paris urged Iraq to pursue efforts to resolve these questions.
French Foreign Ministry spokesman Bernard Valero indicated in answer to KUNA questions that France "encouraged Iraq to get in conformity with the demands which were reiterated yesterday in the (UN) Security Council".
He also urged "the pursuit and broadening of bilateral relations between the two countries".
The UN Security Council was briefed Thursday on the pending issues and extended for another six months the mandate of UN Coordinator for Kuwaiti-Iraqi issues, Gennady Tarasov, despite Iraq objections.
UN Secretary-General Ban ki-Moon recommended the extension and has urged Iraq to do more to resolve the Kuwaiti demands.
Continues ...read more ..
Iraq has been slow to comply with demands on several core issues, notably the provision of information on the more than 600 Kuwaitis who were kidnapped by Iraqi forces during the occupation. Many of these cases remain unresolved, despite a decade of demands by Kuwait and the international community to bring closure to this national tragedy.
Iraq has also failed to account for the national archives stolen from Kuwait and a vast amount of property that was taken by the Iraqi occupation forces, including valuable and historic pieces. There is also the question of financial compensation of around USD 20 billion which must still be paid by Iraq. Moreover, the frontier delineation question has not been fully settled, as Iraq is required to do if it wants UN sanctions applied in 1990 to be fully lifted.
The UN has told Iraq it must help produce "tangible progress" on the issue of the missing Kuwaitis and it was also told to work for an "intensification of efforts to clarify the whereabouts of the archives" as there has been "no substantial progress" on this issue, in the words of UN Secretary-General Ban ki-Moon.
The UN Security Council told Iraq Thursday that it needed to make efforts "to fully meet these commitments, specifically finding Kuwaiti or third-country nationals, property and archives, (and) the members of the Security Council once again expressed their deepest sympathy and condolences to the families of those involved".
"We expect Iraq to continue to work in this direction and we join the call of the
Security Council and we observe the improvements in bilateral relations between Iraq and Kuwait these past months," the French official indicated.
He specifically pointed to bilateral visits these past months and to the establishment of a bilateral committee between the two nations.
"We want the movement which has started these past months to be continued and the bilateral committee was an important step and we encourage the two parties to use this body to make progress on these files in a spirit of dialogue and in a spirit turned towards the future," Valero affirmed.
"In the framework of the work of the Security Council...we are obviously very attentive to the evolution of this file, which deals with issues that are particularly sensitive, notably concerning the disappeared persons and we evidently encourage Iraq to work on getting into conformity with the demands which were reiterated yesterday by the Security Council," Valero responded.
He also said Paris supported UN Resolution 1958, voted Dec 15, 2010, which calls for lifting the punitive sanctions placed on Iraq under Chapter VII of the UN Charter because of the invasion of Kuwait in August 1990, but only once the Kuwaiti issues are settled.
He said France supported lifting UN measures on Iraq, "if it normalises its relations with Kuwait".
He added there was a whole series of measures Iraq must take, including "the marking and demarcation of the borders, compensation, the archives which were stolen, and, obviously, the question of the disappeared Kuwaiti citizens".
These issues are "preconditions" for lifting the Chapter VII and "we expect these preconditions set out in the (Dec 2010) resolution to be met," the French spokesman said.
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