Five trucks carrying looted Kuwaiti archives left the Baghdad on Friday morning, bound for Kuwait, the Iraqi Foreign Ministry said, according to AP.
The freight will be handed over at the Kuwaiti border in compliance with Iraq's pledge in July to return the national archives looted from Kuwait during Iraq's seven-month occupation of the emirate in 1990-91.
The Foreign Ministry said Thursday the archives to be returned belong to the Kuwaiti Foreign Ministry, Interior Ministry, national security and other Kuwaiti agencies.
Iraqi Foreign Ministry official Ghassan Khalil told reporters Friday "We have exerted great efforts to gather the archives and we will hand over them to Kuwaiti side under the supervision of the United Nations ... Today we are embarking on the actual delivery of the documents to the Kuwaiti authorities."
Khalil said the handover would take place some time this weekend in the no man's land between the Iraqi and Kuwaiti borders.
Kuwait has been saying that during their occupation, Iraqis looted archives from the Foreign Ministry, prime minister's office and other government departments, as well as valuable pieces from Kuwait's Islamic and National Museums. It should be noted that the five trucks that left Baghdad were carrying only documents.
The return of the archives is one of the conditions for lifting the sanctions imposed on Iraq by the U.N. Security Council after the invasion of Kuwait. (Albawaba.com)
© 2002 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
