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Re: US-Kuwait Discuss 1991 POW Issue

From: POW-MIA InterNetwork

Date: April 15, 2003

"US, Kuwait discuss 1991 Gulf War PoWs issue
Press Trust of India
Washington, April 15

With the war on Iraq nearing an end, the United States has assured Kuwait that it would follow every possible lead on to trace 600 prisoners of the 1991 war claimed to be held in Baghdad.

US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Kuwaiti Foreign Minister Sabah al Ahmed al Sabah discussed the issue at the  Pentagon on Monday.

Rumsfeld assured al Sabah that the US was working to "pursue every conceivable lead" to trace the PoWs as it was one issue that Kuwait and the US share as a deep concern and an abiding interest. 

Now that Saddam Hussein regime is deposed, Iraqi citizens may come forward with information, he said.

Kuwait maintains that Iraq still holds 600 Kuwaiti prisoners of war. One US Navy pilot Michael Scott Speicher, is also still unaccounted for from the 1991 war.

Rumsfeld said that Kuwait had worked with Britain to build a pipeline into Iraq, which  now delivers two million litres of fresh water a day.

Kuwaiti relief organisations were also providing food and medicine in several Iraqi cities, he said.

Describing Iraq as a country "kidnapped" for 15 years,  al Sabah thanked the Bush Administration for its efforts  to "deliver the Iraqis from bondage." It was now for the Iraqis to settle down and form their own government, he said.

Under Saddam Hussein, "decent people have been tortured, killed and exiled. It would take a long time, I think some time, for the healing process to take hold in Iraq," he said.

© Hindustan Times Ltd. "