Iraq and Kuwait set up team to settle outstanding issues within 30 days

NEW YORK — Iraq and Kuwait have agreed to set up a joint working group to review their outstanding issues and recommend a way forward within 30 days, after Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi met Kuwaiti Crown Prince Sheikh Sabah Khaled al-Hamad al-Mubarak Al Sabah in New York.

The team will meet alternately in Baghdad and Kuwait and report to both leaderships within a period “not exceeding 30 days,” the joint statement said, calling it the start of a new phase of cooperation. It did not say which files the group will take up.

The largest are maritime. The boundary beyond border marker 162 has never been completed, and navigation in Khor Abdullah has been contentious since Iraq’s Federal Supreme Court ruled in 2023 that the law ratifying the bilateral navigation agreement was unconstitutional. An Iraqi fisherman was killed and another wounded in July in an incident involving the Kuwaiti coast guard, after which the two sides agreed on closer security coordination.

The two countries also continue to work with the United Nations on Kuwaitis and others missing since Iraq’s 1990 invasion and on property and national archives taken then. Iraq returned 400 boxes of Kuwaiti and Amiri archives in November 2025.