171 Americans Leave Occupied Kuwait on Chartered U.S. Flights : Gulf crisis: Departure raises hopes that pace of freedom might quicken. Japan, Kuwait and South Korea promise to help bankroll U.S. military effort.

A U.S.-chartered airlift plucked 171 Americans from occupied Kuwait on Friday and carried them to safety in Jordan, raising hopes that the pace of freedom flights might quicken. One arriving American said: “It’s terrible there.”

As the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait stretched into its sixth week, President Bush on Friday night flew to Helsinki, Finland, to meet with Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev on Sunday to discuss the gulf crisis.

U.S. officials say the 100,000-strong American force in the Persian Gulf region is costing about $1 billion a month, and Japan, South Korea and Kuwait on Friday promised financial aid to defray the cost.

But European Community ministers meeting in Rome on Friday made no move to help bankroll the American troops in the gulf.

In Kuwait, a few foreign embassies--including the U.S. mission--were still defying a 2-week-old Iraqi order to shut their doors. But without power, water, telephone service or food, the diplomats were being forced to retreat.

The embassies have tried to stay open in part to avoid the appearance of having accepted Iraq’s annexation of the emirate, and in part to try to provide protection to their citizens.

But there was less and less they could do to help. Americans arriving in the Jordanian capital of Amman on Friday aboard a U.S.-chartered Iraqi Airways jet described desperate conditions.

“Until I felt my feet on freedom, it was just terrifying,” said Elena Reyes of Los Angeles. “I didn’t know night and day when they would come and knock down my door.”

“It’s terrible there,” said Patricia Hammer of Denver. “People are frightened, they’re in hiding, running out of food.”

Iraq has been allowing Western women and children to leave, but Friday’s arrivals told a now familiar story of the heartbreak of leaving husbands and fathers behind. Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has scattered male hostages at key installations as human shields against potential attack by U.S.-led forces.

Dillen said U.S. officials hoped that another group of Americans would leave Kuwait for Amman over the weekend and fly to Charleston, S. C..

“We are planning additional flights to evacuate remaining Americans,” the spokesman said. “Of course, we are aware that Iraq has said that only women and children will be allowed to depart. But we will continue to press for all those who wish to depart to be able to do so.”

The State Department spokesman took issue with the suggestion that U.S.-chartered flights constituted a violation of the sanctions order because they involved paying the Iraqi carrier.

“These are flights with the express purpose of getting Americans and possibly other foreign nationals who have been detained as hostages in Iraq and Kuwait out of these countries,” Dillen said.

The International Committee of the Red Cross had hoped to obtain Iraqi permission for Red Cross delegates to visit trapped foreigners and transmit messages to their families, but Iraq abruptly broke off talks on the issue Friday.

Cornelio Sommaruga, president of the humanitarian agency, said in Geneva that Iraqi authorities pulled out without explanation. He refused to speculate on the reason.

A U.S. congressman told sailors aboard the USS Blue Ridge, anchored off Bahrain, that Hussein would have the same fate as former Panamanian leader Manuel Antonio Noriega, who was toppled in a U.S. invasion in December.

“When they sent the forces down there, Noriega left. It’s the same thing here,” said Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.). He and other lawmakers are inspecting U.S. forces in the gulf to prepare recommendations on the military budget.

Meanwhile, Kuwait’s government-in-exile told Secretary of State James A. Baker III on Friday it would help bankroll the U.S. military effort.

“We will not spare any amount or any value. We will give whatever is necessary,” said the deposed emir, Sheik Jaber al-Ahmed al-Sabah.

A day earlier, Saudi Arabia had pledged several billion dollars toward defraying the cost of the U.S. deployment, which is centered in the oil-rich kingdom.

Treasury Secretary Nicholas F. Brady, wrapping up a mission that took him to Paris, London, Seoul and Tokyo, said Friday that Japan and South Korea had given new assurances of support for the economic and military campaign against Iraq. No dollar figures were provided.

The United States’ European allies were far less forthcoming. After the meeting of the EC foreign ministers, the Italian minister, Gianni De Michelis, said the Europeans were not willing to fund “the expenses of a separate country, even though it is an ally.”

However, the EC nations agreed to give $2 billion in economic aid to Turkey, Jordan and Egypt to compensate them for trade lost as a result of the U.N. sanctions against Iraq.

The European countries also granted more food and other emergency aid for the tens of thousands of refugees from Iraq and Kuwait stranded at Iraq’s borders.

A five-member delegation from the European Parliament toured Jordan’s camps and said Friday it was appalled by the conditions. One member of the delegation called on European nations to provide military transport planes to airlift the refugees home.

Meanwhile, as Bush and Gorbachev prepared to meet, Moscow said it would be willing to provide troops for a U.N. peacekeeping force in the Persian Gulf--if they were under a joint command that included Soviet generals.

But Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze, in Tokyo for talks with Japanese officials, expressed hopes that a military confrontation could be avoided.

“I don’t think that U.S. troops would be well-advised to take some unilateral, one-sided punitive action,” he said Friday.