ALBAWABA – Talks between Iraq and the United States (US) on the sidelines of the international conference on combating terrorism in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, have led to a sanctions waiver, Saturday, allowing Iraq to pay Iran $2.76 billion in due gas and electricity bills.
Iraq has been struggling to pay its dues to Iran for imported gas since the latter came under US sanctions, Bloomberg reported.
Iraqi Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein and his US Secretary of State Antony Blinken met on Saturday. They discussed an arrangement to enable Iraq to pay its dues, foreign ministry spokesperson Ahmed Al-Sahhaf said in a statement.
Two pipelines to import gas were built in the last 10 years, in Iraq, to operate the country’s power plants, Ahmed Moussa told Bloomberg, a spokesman for the electricity ministry.
Iraq needs between 55 and 60 million cubic meters per day, to keep the plants running, he said, adding that Iraq owes Iran around $11 billion.
US sanctions on Iranian oil and gas have hampered Iraq's payments for imports, according to Reuters, putting it in heavy debt and leading Iran to retaliate by cutting gas flows regularly.
Yahya Eshaq, head of the Iran-Iraq chamber of commerce, was quoted by Iranian news agencies saying that "Part of Iran's blocked funds in Iraq has been earmarked for haj pilgrims and portions have been used for basic goods."
Meanwhile, an Iraqi foreign ministry source confirmed Eshaq’s statement to Reuters and that the funds will be transferred through the Commercial Bank of Iraq.
For years, Iran has been unable to access billions of dollars in assets in several countries due to US sanctions.
The US has insisted that oil-rich Iraq, the OPEC group's second-largest producer, moves towards self-sufficiency as a condition for its exemption to import Iranian energy. But Baghdad has struggled to do so, Reuters underlined.
