Most Iraqi POWs Reported Out of Iran : Gulf accord: The battle-hardened troops are freed for duty on Kuwaiti front. Tehran says 2,000 of its war prisoners returned.

Iraqi soldiers Monday were winding up their withdrawal from occupied Iranian territory, the official Iranian news agency said, freeing thousands of battle-hardened troops to face U.S. forces.

On Sunday, Defense Secretary Dick Cheney said the number of Iraqi troops poised on the Kuwaiti border with Saudi Arabia had jumped from 160,000 to 200,000. That figure suggested that Iraqi soldiers from the Iranian border regions might already be bolstering those in Iraq-occupied Kuwait.

The Iraqi withdrawal from Iranian border areas began Friday and was expected to be completed today.

Cheney, inspecting U.S. forces in the Persian Gulf region, refused to say how many American troops have been deployed. The U.S. troops were sent to protect strategic, oil-rich Saudi Arabia after Iraq’s Aug. 2 takeover of Kuwait.

Tehran newspapers Monday attacked the U.S. military presence in Saudi Arabia and predicted that the Saudi monarch, King Fahd, will meet the same fate as the deposed emir of Kuwait.

In an editorial, the newspaper Jomhuri Islami accused the king of allowing the United States to make Saudi Arabia a virtual U.S. state.

“Just as Iraq annexed Kuwait to its territory, the United States has annexed Saudi Arabia to its realm,” said the newspaper, according to Iran’s official Islamic Republic News Agency.

However, the newspaper stressed that although it opposes the U.S. military presence, it also opposes the Iraqi takeover of Kuwait.

The Iraqi withdrawal from Iranian border areas came as part of an initiative by Iraqi President Saddam Hussein last week to formally end the Iran-Iraq War. Fighting in the eight-year conflict had effectively ended with a cease-fire two years ago.

In Iran’s southern region near the Persian Gulf, departing Iraqi troops shouted “Down with the U.S.!” and “Allahu Akbar!” (God is great), the Iranian news agency reported.

The agency said the departing Iraqis expressed desires for “more brotherly relations” between their countries and waved to their former enemies as they pulled out of fortifications along the 30-mile-long Shalamcheh-Kushk axis.

The troop withdrawal is accompanied by the biggest prisoner exchange since World War II. The United Nations and diplomats say the two sides held a total of 100,000 prisoners.

Tehran Radio reported that 2,000 prisoners returned to the Iranian capital Monday in a jubilant homecoming.

The broadcast, monitored in Nicosia, said thousands of relatives and well-wishers thronged Tehran’s Mehrabad airport and crowded surrounding streets. The prisoners were showered with flowers, and sheep were sacrificed for a traditional Islamic welcome.

Iraq’s army daily newspaper, Al Qaddisiyah, had reported that some of the troops formerly deployed along the 730-mile Iran-Iraq frontier would be sent south to confront U.S. forces in Saudi Arabia.

BACKGROUND

Iran and Iraq have a long history of squabbling, often over the vital Shatt al Arab waterway they share as well as some disputed islands. So, it was no great shock when, on Sept. 22, 1980, Iraq bombed Tehran airport and invaded its neighbor to the east. Despite overwhelming Iraqi air superiority and early ground successes, the Iranian military, reinforced by a substantially larger population with a religious commitment to martyrdom, waged a bitter campaign and recovered much of its territory. A lengthy stalemate ensued, with Tehran rebuffing a series of cease-fire proposals by Baghdad. On Aug. 20, 1988, both combatants agreed to an uneasy, U.N.-brokered cease-fire, but peace terms could not be hammered out--until Saddam Hussein’s sudden acceptance of all of Iran’s demands last week.