Iraq has quietly agreed to pay $400 million to Americans who say they suffered at the hands of Saddam Hussein’s regime after the invasion of Kuwait. The settlement will resolve an almost two-decade legal battle, and will allow the US to help Iraq emerge from UN sanctions dating back to the 1990 war. “There was a lot of pressure on the Iraqi government to do something that gets Congress off their back,” a senior Iraqi official tells the Christian Science Monitor.
The money will resolve a variety of claims—the compensated will include children of contractors seized near the Kuwaiti border, Americans used as human shields, and CBS reporter Bob Simon and his crew, who were arrested during the war. But many Iraqis resent paying for the misdeeds of the previous regime. “A lot of blood has flowed since then, and a lot of it is Iraqi blood,” complained one senior official. “This is politics, this is not justice.” (More Kuwait stories.)
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