UN Gulf War body says overpaid total 77 million dollar

GENEVA, Feb 22 (Reuters) The United Nations Gulf War reparations body said today it had finished an investigation into duplicate claims and found it had made overpayments totalling 77 million dollar to countries over the years.

The figure was up from the 60 million dollar the U N Compensation Commission (UNCC) first reported last November when it set next May as the deadline for governments to return any excess money received.

The UNCC is winding up 15 years of work after approving 52.4 billion dollar to compensate damage due to Iraq's August 1990 invasion of Kuwait, some .8 billion of which has been paid out.

Officials have blamed the overpayments on outdated computer technology used to process 1.7 million individual claims early in the programme.

Most duplicate claims were lodged by foreign workers who claimed property losses in Kuwait or were forced to flee after Iraq invaded and occupied the oil-rich emirate for seven months.

India, Jordan, Iran and Sri Lanka account for the largest overpayments made to some 70 governments, according to UNCC documents and senior officials who declined to be named.

Jordan and India accounted for roughly million each in duplicate claims, followed by Iran with 14 million dollar, they said.

Diplomatic sources said that claims filed by Iran showed a much higher percentage of duplicate claims -- some 11 percent against an average of 1 percent for most other countries.

''Iran's percentage of duplicate claims was very high. It was so persistent and organised it looked like the hand of somebody,'' a diplomatic source told Reuters.

The UNCC's latest investigation into Iran's claims found zeros had been added to some passport numbers to make a claim appear to have been filed by another person, he said. Others had slightly different spellings of the same claimant's name.

At the end of a three-day meeting of the UNCC Governing Council, executive-secretary Rolf Knutsson, asked about Iran's duplicate claims, told Reuters: ''The proportion of duplicates in relation to the entire claims population is much higher for Iran than any other country.

''There is a pattern. There is no way of saying whether it was intentional or an innocent error,'' he said.

Alireza Moaiyeri, Iran's ambassador to the U N in Geneva, told the Council that his country had tried its best to clear up ''misunderstandings and misinterpretations''.

''Even if the claims of overpayment could be substantiated by the UNCC, practically its full recovery would not be feasible and realistic,'' Moaiyeri said in a speech obtained by Reuters.

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