Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki lobbied hard at the United Nations today for the lifting of a Security Council resolution from 1991 that requires Iraq to pay 5 percent of its oil revenue to Kuwait and other nations as reparations for the 1991 Gulf War. Baghdad complains that the size of the payments are an unfair legacy of the Saddam Hussein regime. Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and others insist that Iraq must pay for its aggression. Before leaving the UN for Washington for meetings with President Obama, Secretary of Defense Gates and Secretary of State Clinton, the Prime Minister told me, “the international community must recognize that Iraq is a democratic nation that seeks friendly relations with its neighbors.” He said, “nations must learn to trust Iraq” and appreciate that “Iraq is at a critical juncture in its development and needs all the economic resources that it can gather to build a healthy nation.”