A senior PLO official said Saturday the Palestinian leadership is prepared to mend ties with Kuwait strained after Iraq's invasion of the emirate in 1990.
"The Palestinian leadership extends its hand to our Kuwaiti brothers for reconciliation at any time," Secretary of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization Mahmoud Abbas told Al-Rai al-Aam daily.
"We are prepared to sit down with our Kuwaiti brothers, to be frank and settle our differences, in a bid to open a new page in the relations between the two leaderships and peoples," Abbas added.
He said that some unofficial contacts had already taken place between Kuwaitis and Palestinians and hoped "contacts at an official level will take place in a bid to overcome the last 10 years and reach normal ties."
Kuwait accused the Palestinians of supporting Iraq following its invasion of the emirate in August 1990 and the emirate expelled hundreds of thousands of Palestinian and Jordanian workers.
The emirate has since restored normal ties with Jordan, Yemen and Sudan, the other Arab states accused of backing the Iraqi President in his seven-month occupation of Kuwait, but relations with the Palestinians remain frozen.
Palestinian President Yasser Arafat shook hands twice with Kuwait's Foreign Minister Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad al-Sabah during Yemen's unity celebrations in May in the first official contact in 10 years.
But a Kuwaiti official said later the handshake was purely "a protocol gesture" that did not indicate that relations had improved - KUWAIT CITY (AFP)
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