P.K. Abdul Ghafour, Arab News Staff

JEDDAH, 28 September 2003 — Saudi Arabia reiterated yesterday that it would not send any peacekeeping forces to Iraq, and said such troop deployment would not serve the interests of either country.

“The presence of Saudi forces in Iraq would not be in the interests of either country and we are not thinking of it (deployment of troops),” Prince Khaled ibn Sultan, assistant minister of defense and aviation for military affairs, told Okaz daily.

Prince Khaled said the deployment of troops in Iraq by its neighbors would not serve anyone’s interest. “I am saying this based on my expertise as a (former) commander of joint forces.”

He said he was against Saudi Arabia sending troops to Iraq even if the UN Security Council passes a resolution to deploy a multinational force. “This is my personal opinion,” he told the Arabic newspaper.

AFP adds from Washington: US administrator of Iraq, Paul Bremer, said the war reparation payments Iraq owes to Kuwait and Saudi Arabia for losses inflicted in the 1991 Gulf War should be re-examined in the light of Iraq’s poverty and the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.

Iraq has more than $200 billion “overhang” in debt and war reparations, Bremer told a Pentagon press conference on Friday. He estimated that when Iraqi oil production returns to its maximum prewar levels, the country would earn about $5 billion a year after expenses and would have a per capita gross domestic product (GDP) of about $800.

“I have to say that it is curious to me...that a country that poor should be required to pay reparations to countries whose per capita GDP is a factor of 10 times that, for a war which all the Iraqis who are now in government opposed,” he said.

“So I think there needs to be a very serious look at this whole reparations issue.” He said the Iraqi Governing Council “feels very strongly” about the issue, but did not know if it had been raised when council delegations visited “various neighboring countries.” Bremer said, “It will be, obviously, something to be raised through diplomatic channels.”