Few Volunteer to Defend Kuwait

Only about 300 citizens have volunteered so far to help defend this rich Persian Gulf sheikdom, which has been hit by three Iranian missiles in a month and has an army of only 12,000 men.

Officials asked for volunteers after the missile attacks and a bomb explosion Oct. 24 that wrecked the office of a Pan Am agency. The major role of the volunteers probably will be guarding against saboteurs among the 80,000 residents who are Iranians or of Iranian descent, and among radicals in the Shia Muslim population that makes up 30% of Kuwait’s 1.8 million people, most of them Sunni Muslims.