CAIRO (Reuters) – Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries and the U.S., in a joint statement on Wednesday, called for the completion of demarcation of Kuwaiti-Iraqi maritime borders “beyond boundary point 162”.
The statement comes after a meeting of GCC Arab foreign ministers, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and GCC Secretary-General Jasem al-Budaiwi in New York.
They also called on the Iraqi government to “expeditiously resolve the domestic legal status of the 2012 Kuwait-Iraq Agreement to regulate maritime navigation in Khor Abdullah and ensure that the agreement remains in force.”
The joint statement also “called on Iraq and the UN to exert maximum efforts to reach a resolution of all the issues involved.”
The land border between the two was demarcated by the United Nations in 1993 after Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, but it did not cover the length of their maritime boundaries, and this was left for the two oil producers to resolve.
(Reporting by Enas ALashray, Muhammad Al Gebaly; Editing by Christopher Cushing and Jacqueline Wong)
