GENEVA (AFP) - The Geneva-based U.N. Compensation Commission (UNCC) has received demands for compensation totaling $320 billion since the end of the Gulf War, $180 billion of that coming from Kuwait.
Kuwait had claimed $21.6 billion in damages while Japan demanded $562 million in compensation. The Japanese oil company Arabian Oil also received $21.9 million in compensation, Motjaba Kazazi, the head of the commission's secretariat, said.
"Kuwait overestimated its losses," Kazazi said. But the U.N. commission made no decision concerning Saudi Arabia, which had claimed $749 million in compensation.
The UNCC approved a $15.9 billion (18.05 billion euro) package for the Kuwait Petroleum Company (KPC) to cover damages incurred in the 1990 invasion by Iraq.
The package was agreed on Wednesday by the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council in New York as part of a compromise deal under which the level of Iraqi oil revenues going into the compensation fund was cut from 30% to 25%.
The sums levied from Iraqi oil sales for the fund are paid into a compensation scheme for victims of Iraq's August 1990 invasion of its neighbor.
Iraqi forces were driven out of the Gulf state in February 1991 by a massive international U.S. led alliance.
The new rate will come into effect in the next 180-day phase of the U.N.-administered Iraqi oil-for-food program, which starts on December 10.
With the price of oil around $31 a barrel, this will make about an extra $1 billion a year available to import food, medicine and other necessities under the program.
"This means everybody wins," the deputy U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, James Cunningham said Wednesday.
