The world’s leading industrial nations agreed Sunday to cancel 80 percent of the nearly $39 billion debt owed them by Iraq, a critical step in rebuilding the country’s devastated economy and an important precedent for its other creditors to follow. The agreement, after a year of intense lobbying by the United States, puts pressure on Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Iraq’s other Middle Eastern neighbors to forgive obligations owed them, including billions in reparations Iraq owes from the Persian Gulf war in 1991. The Bush administration welcomed the agreement as evidence that relations between the United States and its European allies, frayed over disagreements on Iraq, remain fundamentally strong. Full Story
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