Soviets Still Training Iraqis on Use of Arms, Kremlin Acknowledges : Military: Experts are said to be ‘fulfilling contractual duties.’ This seems sure to spark controversy about Moscow’s pledge to help end the gulf crisis.

MOSCOW — Despite the Kremlin’s condemnation of Iraqi aggression in Kuwait, Soviet military experts are still working side by side with the Iraqis, training them to use and maintain high-tech weaponry they have bought from Moscow, a Soviet army spokesman acknowledged Wednesday.

“They are fulfilling their contractual duties--that is, helping teach how to use the military technology,” Col. Valentin Ogurtsov told reporters.

It was the first such official statement on the status of Soviet military specialists in Iraq since the crisis began Aug. 2.

A Foreign Ministry official rejected suggestions that the specialists, said by Col. Ogurtsov to number 193, are violating U.N. sanctions against Iraq, as well as a Soviet government order suspending trade with Iraq.

And the statement, coming almost three weeks after the Kremlin halted arms sales to Iraq, seemed certain to spark controversy about the depth of the Soviet commitment to help end the Persian Gulf crisis.

Earlier, Soviet authorities had appeared to rule out even the slightest suggestion that they were actively aiding the 1-million-strong Iraqi army. On Aug. 12, The Times quoted U.S. officials as saying that up to 1,000 Soviet advisers were giving assistance to the Iraqi military, drawing a front-page denial in Izvestia, the Soviet government newspaper.

“The military advisers on the territory of Iraq are serving neither the president (Saddam Hussein) nor the armed services,” Izvestia quoted Defense Ministry officials as saying. “The declarations of the (Soviet) government are being rigorously fulfilled.”

The Soviet Union joined with the United States in calling for an international arms embargo against Iraq and has insisted that Iraq withdraw unconditionally from Kuwait. This relatively tough stance toward a former ally made Ogurtsov’s statement all the more startling, and reporters asked him at least three times if the specialists were in fact still working.

“They are fulfilling their contractual obligations,” he replied.

Ogurtsov said the experts also work at maintenance centers and at target ranges testing the arms sold to Iraq. They are not involved in combat and did not take part in planning the invasion of Kuwait, he asserted.

For more than 20 years, the Soviet Union has been Iraq’s No. 1 source of weapons, and published statements here indicate that Soviet specialists trained the Iraqis to use many of the arms employed in the Kuwait invasion--arms that presumably are now arrayed against U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia.

According to Lt. Gen. Vladimir P. Nikityuk of the Soviet General Staff, the Kremlin sold Iraq, under a 1972 friendship treaty, some of the most sophisticated items in its arsenal. These included T-72 tanks, self-propelled 112-millimeter and 152-millimeter guns, MIG-29 warplanes, MI-24 helicopters, anti-tank weapons and missile complexes.

Ogurtsov did not say which weapons the instructors are now training the Iraqis to use or helping to maintain. He said the transfer of such technology was part of the sale.

“Say we supply a new weapon and the local personnel are not acquainted with such a weapon,” he said. “Our expert goes there and teaches the method of use and exploitation of that type of weapon.”

Last year, Iraq spent $25 billion on foreign-made weapons, 53% of it in the Soviet Union, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, a widely respected source.

Ogurtsov said the experts are under contract for periods of 10 days to a year. A Foreign Ministry spokesman, Yuri A. Gremitskikh, who appeared at the same news conference Wednesday, said the Soviet personnel will leave Iraq when their contracts expire. He denied that their presence violates the U.N. embargo, or an order published Wednesday by Prime Minister Nikolai I. Ryzhkov that says all Soviet organizations must sever trade ties with Iraq in compliance with the U.N. sanctions.

“I don’t think the presence of a very small number of specialists runs counter to the United Nations position,” Gremitskikh said. He argued that citizens from other countries are still working in Iraq and that the situation of the Soviet experts is not special.

Thousands of Americans and other Westerners are being held in Iraq against their will, and the 5,000 Soviets there were described by Gremitskikh on Tuesday as “detainees.” He said women and children had been given Iraq’s permission to leave. This left open the possibility that the weapons experts might be working under duress, but Ogurtsov said he knew of no threats against them.

Meanwhile, Soviet officials pursued their efforts to bring about a negotiated resolution of the Persian Gulf crisis and said diplomatic methods had not been exhausted.

“We have to use to the fullest the exciting potential of peaceful solutions,” Gremitskikh said. “We believe that when such a serious thing as the use of force is at issue, however minimal, we must not take hasty action.”

Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze, as in the past, seemed to disapprove of the use of military means to pressure Iraq into withdrawing from Kuwait. He said the U.N. resolutions already adopted “clearly define the basis for a gulf settlement and methods to attain this.”

Shevardnadze conferred with a special Saudi envoy, Prince Bandar ibn Sultan, and according to the news agency Tass, the two agreed that armed confrontation in the gulf region would have worldwide consequences. Tass said the prince was carrying a message for Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev from Saudi King Fahd, but gave no details.

The Soviet Union and Saudi Arabia have had no diplomatic relations since 1938. The prince’s visit was the latest in a series of bilateral contacts in Moscow linked to the Persian Gulf crisis. On Monday and Tuesday, Shevardnadze met with Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Saadoun Hammadi.