In an interview carried by the Saturday edition of the Kuwaiti newspaper Al Kabas, the Russian diplomat points out that Iraq's toppled Baath government denied the presence of prisoners of war and missing personnel from Kuwait, who, according to Kuwaiti sources, numbered 5 or 6.
Officials in Baghdad claimed that one truck carrying a group of POWs had gone missing near the city of Basra in early 1991, during a Shiite insurgency in southern Iraq.
"Now that the remains of killed Kuwaitis have been found in mass graves, we know that this is an outright lie," Mr. Vorontsov said. He indicated that thanks to efforts of an international commission chaired by him, most of the Kuwaiti property looted and smuggled out by Iraqis had now been restored to Kuwait and that efforts were presently underway to regain the national archives and the archives of Parliament.
Mr. Vorontsov said his commission would not be attending the trial of the former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, but that it had handed over to the Kuwaiti side some documentary evidence proving Baath Party activists' complicity in crimes against Kuwait and its people.
According to Yuly Vorontsov, the remains of 155 Kuwaiti nationals and foreigners reported missing in Iraq have been found and identified thus far.
