Kuwait to host Iraq reconstruction conference in 2018

Kuwait will hold a conference on reconstructing war-torn Iraq early next year, the US presidential envoy to the US-led international coalition fighting the Islamic State said on Friday.

"The Iraqi Government is working very closely with the World Bank and the IMF to stabilise their macroeconomic situation and Prime Minister Abadi's done a great job with that", US envoy Brett McGurk told reporters on Friday.

"The Kuwait reconstruction conference will build on all of that. So that will be early next year", he said.

Kuwaiti Prime Minister Jaber Al-Mubarak Al-Hamad Al Sabah had told the UN General Assembly earlier this week that the country intends to host an international donor conference in the coming year to help Iraq rebuild the areas devastated by the war against the Islamic State group.

During his address to the UN on Wednesday, Al Sabah congratulated Iraq for its recent victories on the battlefield against IS, expressing hopes that national reconciliation would create conditions to start reconstruction efforts and allow refugees to return home.

On Thursday, Iraq began an offensive to retake Hawija, one of two remaining bastions of the Islamic State group in the country.

Iraqi forces have now forced IS out of all its Iraqi territories except Hawija, 300 kilometres north of Baghdad, and several pockets of territory near the border with Syria.

The town was one of the first areas to fall under IS control in 2014.

Iraqi forces declared victory over the extremists in Mosul in July and in the western town of Tal Afar the following month.

The Islamic State group swept through a third of Iraq in 2014, seizing Mosul, the largest city in the north, and reaching the vicinity of Baghdad.