U.S. Joins Effort to Bar Claims on Iraqi Coffers

[struggle4progress]

By STEVEN LEE MYERS and JAMES GLANZ
Published: December 10, 2008

George Charchalis says he has never really recovered from the ordeal he endured after Saddam Hussein’s Iraq invaded Kuwait in August 1990 ...

After the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Mr. Charchalis, now 78, had every reason to believe that he and 240 other Americans held during the Persian Gulf war of 1991 would be compensated under expansive laws that allow Americans to claim assets of foreign governments like Iraq’s. President Bush, after all, had seized Iraqi assets just before the war and paid other people used as human shields nearly $100 million.

But, illustrating the stark trajectory of the Bush administration’s policy in Iraq, the president has joined a new effort to block further claims, at least for the immediate future ...

Some of those with claims say that Mr. Bush’s reversal amounts to a betrayal of Americans who were harmed by the former government and who once enjoyed the moral and legal support of the American government ...

Iraq still owes some $26 billion on claims, mainly from Kuwait, that have been handled by the United Nations Compensation Commission, a body set up in 1991 to deal with reparations ...

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/11/world/middleeast/11claims.html?_r=1&em