KUWAIT CITY (AFP) – Iraq has named Mohammed Hussein Bahr al-Ulum as its first ambassador to Kuwait since Saddam Hussein’s 1990 invasion of the emirate, a senior Iraqi official was quoted as saying on Tuesday.

Foreign ministry under-secretary Mohammed al-Haj Homud told the Kuwaiti daily Al-Jarida that Baghdad was waiting for Kuwait’s approval to send the envoy, with Ulum expected to take up his post within the next two weeks.

Ulum is a son of senior Iraqi cleric Mohammed Bahr al-Ulum and brother of former oil minister Ibrahim Bahr al-Ulum.

Kuwait appointed a former army chief of staff, Ali al-Momen, as ambassador to Iraq in October 2008.

Iraqi troops invaded oil-rich Kuwait in August 1990 before they were driven out seven months later by a US-led military coalition. Saddam himself was toppled in the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq and later executed.