Kuwait Demands Iraq Act Seriously Amid Escalating Maritime Dispute

(MENAFN) Kuwait on Tuesday issued a pointed diplomatic warning to Iraq, demanding the country act "seriously and responsibly" in accordance with international law as a simmering maritime boundary dispute between the two Gulf neighbors continued to intensify.

In an official cabinet statement, Kuwait called on Baghdad "to take into account the course of historical relations" between the two nations and "to deal seriously and responsibly in accordance with the rules and principles of international law and what is stipulated in the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea of 1982 and in accordance with bilateral understandings, agreements and memoranda of understanding."

The strongly worded appeal follows Kuwait's decision last week to summon Iraq's chargé d'affaires in protest over Baghdad's submission of maritime coordinates and a territorial map to the United Nations — a move Kuwait contends encroaches upon its sovereign territory.

Baghdad, however, stood its ground. The Iraqi cabinet, convening Tuesday under Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, reaffirmed Iraq's sovereign rights over its lands and territorial waters, while striking a conciliatory tone, pledging commitment to "maintaining the best relations with all neighboring countries, in a manner that guarantees mutual rights and national sovereignty, within the framework of constructive fraternal relations."

Iraq's Foreign Ministry had previously defended the UN filing on Sunday, asserting it was carried out "in accordance with the international law of the sea."

The dispute carries the weight of a fraught historical backdrop. In August 1990, Iraq under then-President Saddam Hussein launched a full-scale invasion of Kuwait, triggering the 1991 Gulf War, which ended when a U.S.-led international coalition expelled Iraqi forces after seven months of conflict. Diplomatic ties between the two nations were not restored until 2003, following the fall of Saddam Hussein's government.

While the United Nations subsequently demarcated the land boundary between the two countries in the war's aftermath, a full maritime boundary settlement was never reached — leaving critical offshore delimitation questions unresolved between two of the region's most significant oil-producing states, and setting the stage for the standoff now unfolding before the international community.

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