Hostages Return, Tell of Ordeal at Embassy : Gulf crisis: 49 arrive in the U.S. They say Americans in Kuwait are running out of food and must drink water taken from the swimming pool.

An unspecified number of Americans still holed up inside the U.S. Embassy in Kuwait, including two babies, have only two days’ worth of food left, and the compound’s swimming pool is now their only source of drinking water, according to some of the 47 Americans and two Canadians who arrived in Washington on Sunday from the Middle East.

Most of the hostages, looking bedraggled after a grueling journey of about 24 hours, chose not to discuss their ordeal. But some who lingered reported a dire situation inside the embassy.

They said that as many as 160 Americans had made their way inside the compound shortly after the Aug. 2 invasion, arousing fears of a food and water shortage. As a result, some of them donned disguises and sneaked out to fetch more sustenance from their homes around Kuwait city.

After the Iraqis turned off electricity to the embassy, those inside used diesel fuel to power the generators. But as that fuel began dwindling, the Americans used what was left to cook all the remaining frozen turkeys on hand.

“We were chopping up furniture to heat water to cook on,” said Ed Johnson, a 62-year-old St. Louis businessman.

“We were just trying to cook as much as we could,” added Bonnie Anderton, of Denver.

“I have never eaten so much turkey in my life,” said Lloyd Culbertson, 76, a Canadian who now makes his home in El Paso, Tex., and was in Kuwait teaching electronics to its military.

But without electricity since Aug. 24, what little that remains of the perishable foods is rapidly spoiling, the former hostages said. Meanwhile, water was being taken from the swimming pool and boiled to make it suitable for drinking.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson, who accompanied the hostages home aboard an Iraqi Airways jumbo jet, said he was curtly rebuffed when he appealed personally to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to provide the remaining Americans with food, water and fuel.

“Their food is spoiling,” Jackson said he told Hussein. “They asked me to ask for a truck of water and a truck of diesel gas.”

The Iraqi president’s reply, according to Jackson, was: “It is not an embassy. It is no longer a state. It is a province of Iraq.”

Shortly after their mid-morning arrival at Dulles International Airport in suburban Virginia, most of the returned hostages either went directly from the government’s makeshift re-entry processing center to catch connecting flights home or else left with friends or relatives.

Many had left husbands and fathers behind. The Kuwaiti government-in-exile has promised to give financial help to families whose breadwinners are being held hostage in Kuwait.

Iraqi Ambassador Mohammed Mashat, who was summoned to the State Department on Saturday to hear renewed U.S. complaints about Iraq’s treatment of Americans, was at the airport on Sunday as the Americans arrived. But he quickly stalked out when Culbertson angrily told a press conference that Mashat “is dead wrong” in his characterization of those held as “guests” of Iraq.

“The people I just left about 24 hours ago are held against their will without water, without food, without electricity, and the ambassador says they are free to go,” said Culbertson.

Upon landing at Dulles, an American woman with a fractured hip was taken directly from the jetliner by ambulance to a local hospital. Many of the others, according to Jackson, had been released because of illnesses such as diabetes, heart disease and cancer.

A Jackson aide said he was aware of only one Californian among the returnees--a woman from the San Diego area. But he declined to identify her.

The State Department, citing privacy concerns, also refused to identify any of those who returned. However, among those arriving was Dawn Bazner, whose husband, Kevin, had appealed for the release of women and children during a televised meeting between Hussein and a group of hostages. Her husband was left behind, but she was met at the airport by her in-laws, who live in Palm Desert. She did not speak to the media on arrival.

President Hussein had promised that all foreign women and children could leave by last Wednesday, but he immediately began throwing bureaucratic roadblocks in their paths. At least some of the returning 47 had been in Baghdad from the outset of the hostilities.

It was not clear how the final decision was made concerning who was allowed to leave this weekend. But Jackson was instrumental in getting a number of sick people, including men, onto the flight.

Those landing at Dulles were among about 700 Americans, Europeans and Japanese who flew out of Baghdad aboard three jetliners in what Hussein described as a massive humanitarian airlift.

One Iraqi plane took 68 Japanese women and children and one man to Jordan. From there, they flew to Tokyo on a Japan Air Lines jet. A second evacuation, by a chartered Lufthansa Airbus, flew 250 women and 61 children, including 65 Americans, to Frankfurt. The U.S. citizens spent the night at the Sheraton Hotel in Frankfurt, and most of them were expected to return to various destinations in the United States on separate flights.

The flight that landed at Dulles at 9:40 a.m. Sunday carried more than 237 hostages when it left Baghdad early Sunday morning. It stopped in Paris and London, dropping off the French and British citizens. Among them was Stuart Lockwood, the 5-year-old boy who captured world sympathy during his televised encounter with Hussein.

Subsequently the remaining 47 Americans--11 men, 24 women and 12 children--and two Canadians continued on to Washington. There were no official embassy personnel on board.

About 10 diplomats remain in the U.S. Embassy in Kuwait, but it is unclear how many non-official Americans remain in the embassy compound. The State Department estimates that 2,718 Americans remain in Iraq and Kuwait, including more than 900 women and children. Jackson said that at least 1,400 Americans are in Kuwait, “many of them hiding in fear.”

Bush did not comment on the hostages’ arrival Sunday, but on Saturday he said that the selective release displayed “a certain brutality, a certain tawdry performance.”

Several of the hostages called for further diplomatic efforts aimed at the release of all those held.

Interestingly, the United States could well have seized the Iraqi 747 both under the U.N.-imposed sanctions against Iraq as well as a part of Washington’s move to freeze all Iraqi assets in this country. But an Iraqi Embassy official said late Sunday that the airline’s crew was planning to spend the night at a hotel here and then return to Baghdad today.

Most of the American hostages who arrived here Sunday spoke guardedly, if at all, about those who remained behind, citing concern for their safety. Among those still in the American Embassy in Kuwait, according to St. Louis businessman Johnson, are two people who are ill.

Johnson and several of the others praised U.S. Ambassador W. Nathaniel Howell and Barbara Badine, the deputy chief of mission, for keeping order in the compound even as the number of refugees swelled.

“We all had jobs,” he said. “I worked on power.”

Like the others, Johnson declined to say how many Americans remain inside the embassy in Kuwait. “That’s a secret,” he said. One Jackson aide said two infants are among the embassy refugees.

At Dulles on Sunday, the Iraqi ambassador said: “As far as the men are concerned, we are willing to let them go, providing the United States will give us a guarantee that they are not going to strike Iraq.”

During his negotiations with Iraqis, Jackson said that at one point, he flatly refused to leave when it appeared that one American woman who had come out of hiding from a Kuwait hotel would be detained. It took six additional hours of negotiations before the Iraqis agreed to let her go, he said.

At another point, Jackson had a list of five ill Americans, but the Iraqis demanded that he chose one to remain behind. Jackson said he refused and the Iraqis eventually relented.

Anderton of Denver said she had to leave her husband, Richard, an engineer, behind.

They and their 10-year-old daughter, Jennifer, arrived in Kuwait in mid-June, and sought shelter at the embassy on Aug. 3, a day after Iraq invaded Kuwait. She said she was among those who sneaked out of the compound in disguise to fetch food for the refugees.

Anderton said she was torn about leaving her husband behind but that they agreed she should leave with their daughter because they wanted the child to start school and because the girl needed medical attention. Anderton, her own right hand swathed in a bandage, declined to specify her daughter’s medical need.

“Next summer,” Anderton quipped, “we’re going to Disneyland.”

Times staff writers Doyle McManus and Robert W. Stewart contributed to this story.