Iraq Blocks Europeans at Border : Refugees: Baghdad has said countries not aiding the blockade could withdraw nationals. But guards bar Swiss and Swedes from leaving.

Iraqi authorities stood firm Thursday against the release of civilian hostages whose governments support the blockade of Iraq, and they threw up new barriers in front of the few families promised safe passage.

Swedish and Swiss authorities, whose nations have not contributed ships to the blockade, said busloads of their nationals made the 30-hour drive from Baghdad to the Turkish border, only to be blocked in most cases by Iraqi frontier guards who said their papers were not in order.

This took place on the eve of the ordered closure of all foreign embassies in Iraqi-occupied Kuwait. The United States, the 12 members of the European Community, the Soviet Union and Japan, among other countries, say they will defy the order. Among the foreigners trapped in Kuwait are 4,000 Britons and about 2,500 Americans.

In Warsaw on Thursday, Polish workers returning home from Iraq said they saw Iraqi guards escorting more than 30 Americans into a chemical plant where the Poles had been working. This was interpreted as evidence that Iraq is carrying out the “human shield” policy it has threatened to use as a deterrent to attack.

Late Wednesday, Iraqi Foreign Minister Tarik Aziz told two United Nations envoys that release of any hostages would “be linked with intentions of the United States,” whose land and naval forces dominate the military blockade of Iraq. With Jordan’s belated--and still reluctant--compliance, the U.N.-mandated sanctions appear to have become virtually airtight.

Meanwhile, Baghdad Television on Thursday broadcast a meeting between President Saddam Hussein and a group of hostages, many of whom spoke with British accents, among them several children.

“We would have liked to get to know you under other circumstances,” he said through an interpreter. “We hope your presence here is not going to be long.”

But there appeared to be no easy way out even for foreigners assured that they could leave the Iraqi strongman’s embattled country. Baghdad has said that countries not contributing ships to the blockade would be allowed to withdraw their nationals. But only 21 of the 43 Swiss who reached the Turkish border were permitted to cross.

In Stockholm, a spokesman for the Swedish Foreign Ministry, Lisette-Lindahl Owens, said only a few of the 90 Swedes who managed to get to the Turkish border had been allowed to leave.

“We don’t know anything yet about the practical details,” she said, “just that they allowed only a small part of the Swedish group to cross.”

European news reports said that a group of Finns also were barred from leaving Iraq. Baghdad has hinted that French and Japanese nationals might be allowed to leave. This was interpreted as an attempt to erode the international commitment to the blockade imposed soon after Iraq’s Aug. 2 invasion of Kuwait. Japan rebuffed the apparent Iraqi offer Thursday.

In an “open letter” read over Baghdad Television on Thursday evening, Hussein responded to Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s emotional appeal for a withdrawal from Kuwait in order to avoid “a destructive war that will devour everything.”

Hussein asserted that he was the victim of a conspiracy and that Saudi Arabia’s King Fahd had plotted against him. He said he had possession of a July 9 tape recording--”a gift from God,” he called it--that proved the king’s complicity. He gave no details.

Hussein, who is not known as a devout Muslim and heads a professed secular state, said Mubarak should join him in a struggle against “nonbelievers and corrupt people.”

Elsewhere, reverberations from the standoff have pushed world oil prices to more than $30 a barrel, the highest level in five years. Sadek Boussena, president of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, reportedly has called for an informal meeting of the cartel’s members Sunday in Vienna. Saudi Arabia has argued for a full-scale emergency meeting in order to discuss increased production levels that might hold prices down.

Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf states of Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates have issued further calls for military recruits. With small populations, they are incapable of raising a significant force, but the move underlined the solidarity of the sheikdoms, buoyed by the presence of heavy Western military deployments in the gulf.

Tom King, Britain’s secretary of defense, said in London that his government is sending a squadron of 12 Tornado fighters to Bahrain, which last week granted Britain the use of its air bases. A squadron of Tornados was sent to Saudi Arabia shortly after the Iraqi invasion, and a similar unit of Jaguar fighter-bombers was deployed to Oman.

So far, no British land forces have been ordered to the region. French military authorities announced Wednesday in Paris that they were deploying a 180-member reconnaissance unit to the United Arab Emirates.

The continuing buildup has not budged Hussein, who has flatly rejected international demands that he withdraw his forces from Kuwait.

Diplomatic efforts continue, but they are given little hope of succeeding. Jordan’s King Hussein flew to Sana, Yemen, for discussions with Yemen’s president, Col. Ali Abdullah Saleh. Both Jordan and Yemen are members of the Gulf Cooperation Council, but the council has been fractured by the angry break between its two big powers, Egypt and Iraq, as a result of the invasion.

“This is the most difficult situation the Arab nation has faced so far,” King Hussein said before leaving Jordan, “but I am confident we will inevitably reach our aims and goals if we follow the shortest path.” He was accompanied by his prime minister, Mudar Badran.

King Hussein said he hopes to visit in Baghdad with the Iraqi president, whom he acknowledged he has not talked to in more than a week.

Arab officials in the gulf states say King Hussein does not have the influence to be an effective mediator.

The exiled Kuwaiti regime is also mounting a diplomatic push for support in the crisis. Foreign Minister Sabah al Ahmed al Sabah flew to Tehran for talks with Iranian President Hashemi Rafsanjani. According to news reports, Rafsanjani stuck to the line of opposing the occupation of Kuwait and expressing concern over the Western presence in the gulf, which forms Iran’s southwestern coastline.