MOSCOW, April 12 (Reuters) - Russia will not forgive Iraq some $8 billion in Soviet-era debt, Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin said on Saturday, a day after President Vladimir Putin said Moscow could consider wiping clean Baghdad's slate.
Speaking from Washington where he is taking part in a meeting of finance ministers from the Group of Eight leading industrialised nations, Kudrin said Moscow would not forgive loans granted to Iraq under Saddam Hussein until Russia's own Soviet debts were written off.
"No one has forgiven Russia's debt, regardless of what kind of regime it was and regardless of the country's clout," he told Russian state television.
"For this reason, international law and our membership of the Paris Club of creditor nations will allow us to press for the repayment of our loans."
Russia inherited some $100 billion in Soviet-era debt. It faces a debt repayment peak of $17 billion in 2003.
"We are acting on the basis of the same rules here: we are doing what is being done to us," Kudrin said.
Putin, speaking in St Petersburg at a joint press conference alongside his French and German counterparts, said on Friday Russia had no objection to a U.S. proposal that some or all of Iraq's debts be written off to help rebuild the country.
"On the whole the proposal is understandable and legitimate. In any event, Russia has no objection to such a proposal," Putin told reporters.
Most estimates put Iraqi debts to Russia and France at about $8 billion each, mostly for contracts concluded in the 1980s, but some analysts say Moscow could be owed up to $12 billion.
Germany's Finance Ministry said on Friday Iraq owed Berlin a sum just short of four billion euros ($4.3 billion).
Germany and France, members of the Paris Club alongside Russia, have given a cool response to the proposal tabled by U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowtiz, saying it is to early to discuss debt.
The Paris Club is an informal forum for 19 creditor nations to discuss rescheduling debts to developing countries.
Iraq is thought to face some $142 billion in enforceable debt claims as well as up to $300 billion in reparations outstanding from the invasion of Kuwait.