Agence France Presse

KUWAIT CITY, 15 June 2004 — Kuwait yesterday denied allegations that officers from the emirate took part in the interrogation and abuse of Iraqi prisoners at the notorious Abu Ghraib jail on the outskirts of Baghdad.

“This is totally baseless. Such claims lack evidence and proof,” said a statement issued by the Interior Ministry.

“No Kuwaiti officer or policeman entered Iraq along with the coalition forces. No Kuwaiti has entered any Iraqi jail or interrogated Iraqi or third country prisoners,” the statement said.

Evidence that US soldiers abused Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib has caused major damage to the US-led occupation of Iraq.

So far, one US soldier has been jailed for one year for his role in the abuse at Abu Ghraib and six other junior US soldiers face courts martial over the scandal.

Meanwhile, a Kuwaiti parliamentary panel investigating allegations of wrongdoing in fuel sales to the US military in Iraq accused the government yesterday of not cooperating in the inquiry. The head of the five-member panel, MP Ali Al-Rashed, told Parliament that the government was not responding to the committee’s requests and asked the house to extend the deadline for it to complete its investigation.

“Until now, we don’t know the government position toward the information we obtained. The government does not respond to our requests,” Rashed said.

When it was set up in February, the panel was given 60 days to report to Parliament. But as it could not complete its work, its mission was extended for a similar duration that has now ended.

MPs approved a fresh extension until the next parliamentary term which begins in October after a four-month summer recess. The investigation concerns a deal, worth hundreds of millions of dollars, between the state-owned Kuwait Petroleum Corp. (KPC) and private firm Al-Tanmia Commercial Marketing Co, to supply 1,500 tons of fuel daily to the US Army in Iraq through US oil services giant Halliburton.

A draft US audit disclosed in December that the US government had been overcharged by some $61 million for oil purchased through Halliburton’s subcontractor in Kuwait. Kuwaiti MPs charged that Al-Tanmia has been making profits of about 840,000 dollars a day from overcharging Halliburton’s subsidiary Kellogg, Brown and Root (KBR), endangering Kuwait’s close ties with the United States.

Energy Minister Sheikh Ahmed Fahd Al-Sabah has categorically denied that Kuwait was involved in the suspect contract irregularities and assured Parliament that “public funds were not misused in the deal.”

The panel has already interviewed senior oil executives, government officials, including the energy minister, and representatives of the private company.