ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Iraq and Kuwait have agreed to form a joint working team to review outstanding issues between the two countries and develop a roadmap to resolve them, according to a joint statement issued following a meeting between their leaders in New York.
The team will review unresolved files and submit joint recommendations to the leaderships of Iraq and Kuwait within 30 days, the statement said.
The agreement followed talks between Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi and Kuwaiti Crown Prince Sheikh Sabah Khaled Al-Hamad Al-Sabah on the sidelines of the 81st United Nations General Assembly.
“The two sides agreed to form a joint Iraqi-Kuwaiti working team tasked with reviewing outstanding issues, developing a roadmap to address them, and submitting joint recommendations to the leaderships of both countries within no more than 30 days,” the statement, which was shared by Zaidi’s office, said.
The team will meet alternately in Baghdad and Kuwait until its work is completed.
The statement did not specify which outstanding issues would be addressed, but several long-running files have shaped relations between the neighbors, particularly the demarcation of their maritime boundary beyond border marker 162 and the status of navigation in the Khor Abdullah waterway.
Iraq and Kuwait have held several rounds of talks over the maritime boundary beyond marker 162, with the two sides saying the issue should be resolved in accordance with international law and the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea.
Khor Abdullah, a narrow waterway providing maritime access to Iraq’s Umm Qasr port, has been another sensitive issue.
Iraq’s Federal Supreme Court in September 2023 declared unconstitutional a 2013 law ratifying an agreement with Kuwait regulating navigation in the waterway, ruling that parliament had failed to approve it with the constitutionally required two-thirds majority.
The ruling prompted concern in Kuwait and renewed debate over the agreement, though the court’s decision focused on the constitutional procedure used to ratify the deal rather than formally redrawing the internationally recognized land boundary between the two states.
Other unresolved files stem from Iraq’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait, including efforts to identify missing Kuwaiti and third-country nationals and locate Kuwaiti property and national archives removed during the occupation. The United Nations has continued to encourage Baghdad and Kuwait to make progress on those humanitarian issues.
Iraq completed payment of more than $52 billion in UN-mandated compensation arising from the invasion in 2022, ending the mandate of the United Nations Compensation Commission.
The two sides said they fully support the newly established working team and hope its work will help “close the outstanding files and open a new chapter of cooperation and partnership” between Iraq and Kuwait.
