Baghdad said it was worried that Kuwait\u2019s new giant port would strangle Iraqi shipping lanes and especially its oil exports. These have to pass through the narrow gap around Boubyan Island, the site of the port project \u2013 and a strategically sensitive area at the tip of the Gulf.<\/p>\n
Further, Kuwait’s Mubarak Al-Kabir project is only 20km away from Iraq\u2019s own major Al-Fao Port development, which in a tit-for-tat move has been brought forward to start construction in 2012, reports the Kuwait Times.<\/p>\n
Baghdad has been a little late in responding to Kuwait\u2019s plans: although Iraq summarily demanded work on the project stop until studies \u2013 referencing Iraq\u2019s maritime rights \u2013 were completed, it didn\u2019t start to object until four years after construction work had begun: predictably Kuwait declined.<\/p>\n
However, this week saw an increase in security as an Iraqi delegation visited the site which lies around 120km north of Kuwait City. Meetings with a regional environmental organisation and other bodies are soon to take place.<\/p>\n
It can’t be ignored that the area has its share of political instability; particularly welcome is the possibility that the two countries could work together on a joint technical committee, suggesting that both sides might benefit in economic terms from co-operation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Talks seem to have staved off difficulties between Iraq and Kuwait over the country\u2019s mega-port construction in the restricted Khour Abdullah waterway, but the situation still has its tensions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":3422,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[],"sponsor":[],"class_list":["post-3421","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle-east"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3421","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3421"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3421\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3423,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3421\/revisions\/3423"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3422"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3421"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3421"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3421"},{"taxonomy":"sponsor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sponsor?post=3421"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}