Last U.S. Refugee Plane Leaves Iraq : Persian Gulf: Hundreds of Americans remain as pawns in the largest hostage crisis in the nation’s history. Baghdad publishes interviews with ‘human shields.’

The last U.S.-chartered freedom flight from Baghdad landed in London on Saturday night en route to the United States, leaving several hundred Americans behind in Iraq and Kuwait as pawns in the largest hostage crisis in American history.

On board the Iraqi Airways Boeing 707, due to land today in Raleigh, N.C., were 178 women and children, mostly American. Ten British women and children left the plane in London.

As if to taunt Washington and its allies as the plane left Baghdad, the Iraqi News Agency published interviews with three hostages, including an American, detained at an installation that the Iraqis said would be a likely target of American air power should war erupt. The men praised the evacuation of women and children and pleaded for a peaceful settlement of the conflict.

The end of the evacuation of women and children--more than 2,000 have fled by air since Iraqi President Saddam Hussein announced he would release them a month ago--will force the Bush Administration to face harsh and difficult choices. President Bush has said the presence of hostages will not affect his decisions, but the United States has never had so many Americans in such danger before.

Even as the evacuees flew out of Baghdad, King Hussein of Jordan appeared on American television to plead for a peaceful settlement of the Persian Gulf conflict.

“We must avert an explosion in this highly inflammable area straddling the world’s richest oil reserves that would cause untold death, destruction and misery with disastrous repercussions far beyond this vital region and this period of human life,” Hussein said, reading a statement on Cable News Network from his palace in Amman.

But Hussein, who has irritated American officials with his seeming support for President Hussein of Iraq, offered no plan for peace short of condemning both the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and the buildup of U.S. forces in the Persian Gulf region. And, in reply to a question, he acknowledged that he is pessimistic about the chances for peace. The situation is “quite dangerous and quite ominous at this point of time,” he said.

The final evacuation flight left between 800 and 1,100 Americans behind in Iraq and Kuwait. Officials of the State Department’s Kuwait Task Force said they did not expect to have a final tally until next week. But the officials estimated that perhaps 300 to 400 of the remaining Americans are men forced to stay against their will. The others are wives who did not want to leave their hostage husbands, Americans married to Arab men and American-born children of Arab parents.

About 100 Americans have so far been moved to strategic installations to act as “human shields,” according to the State Department task force. Hussein’s apparent hope is that their presence will deter the United States from attacking Iraq.

As the crisis deepens, more Americans may be positioned at military and industrial installations as shields--a tragic situation that may confuse the American public, provoking demands that the Administration act against Iraq while raising fears that any military action could backfire and result in the deaths of innocent American hostages.

Although a few men have been allowed to leave on the evacuation flights, most have been forced to remain. In all, more than 4,100 citizens from the United States, Europe and Japan are considered potential hostages in the gulf standoff. Britain has the largest share: about 1,000 in Kuwait and 430 in Iraq, of whom about 230 are believed to have been dispersed to military facilities and plants. Tens of thousands of other foreign nationals, ranging from Soviets to South Koreans, are also stuck in Iraq and Kuwait, their status uncertain.

The plight of the hostages was underscored by the interviews with the three men, propaganda in the current war of nerves. The Iraqi News Agency said that the three were held at “a vital installation” in Mosul in northern Iraq.

American Robert Scott Shiller was quoted as appealing for a peaceful settlement in the conflict. The news agency said that Trikochi Andre Louis of France had “expressed his regret over the presence of American troops” in the area, describing them as “a dangerous thing that does not serve peace and stability.”

Rigard Don King of Britain, according to the INA, praised the release of women and children during the last month. “It is a proof of good intentions not to subject the region and the peoples of the world to a destructive war,” King was quoted as telling the news agency.

The evacuation also has heightened concerns about the repressive Iraqi occupation of Kuwait. Many of the women, withholding their identities to protect their husbands, have offered chilling tales in the last three weeks of Iraqi cruelty and destruction.

When the evacuation flights of Western women and children began in the first week of September, a British woman told reporters on arrival in London that Americans trapped in Kuwait were hoping desperately for an American counter-invasion.

The situation has worsened sharply in subsequent weeks, according to refugees and spokespersons for the exiled Kuwaiti regime. American men in Kuwait remain in hiding in private houses, dodging the Iraqi troops that are conducting neighborhood searches for foreigners.

Both the British and American embassies, still holding out in Kuwait without supplies of food or water, have set up warden systems to keep in touch with their citizens. To inform British citizens of the flight that left Kuwait on Saturday, the British Broadcasting Corp. began its hourly Middle East broadcasts with a message from the Foreign Office. It said the British government “strongly urges” women and children to get in touch with the embassy through the warden system for details on the flight. But, in the end, only a few British women showed up.

The end of the procession of charter flights was signaled Friday by State Department spokeswoman Margaret Tutwiler, who told journalists in Washington, “Our embassy reports from Baghdad that all the Americans in Iraq who have been able to leave and who wanted to leave have now departed. . . . We have no more charters scheduled at this time.”

In all, officials believe that nearly 2,500 Americans have managed to leave the troubled area. Although the vast majority left on the air charters, perhaps 500 fled by land over the borders to Jordan and Saudi Arabia.

The enormity of the potential hostage problem can be judged by comparing it to the turmoil caused by the seizure of the American Embassy in Tehran in 1979. The concern for the 52 hostages, who were held for 444 days, paralyzed the Administration of President Jimmy Carter. But President Bush has vowed that the hostages in Iraq will have no impact on his political and military decisions.

Times staff writers Robin Wright in Washington and Nick B. Williams Jr. in Amman, Jordan, contributed to this report.