Baghdad Frees 14 Americans, Other Hostages

Fourteen Americans, part of a sudden surge of more than 50 captive Westerners freed by Iraq, arrived Tuesday evening in Jordan, relieved to be out of Baghdad but concerned about the people they left behind.

The release of more French, British and Finnish detainees was either completed or in process. Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s current hostage strategy is expected to peak today with a decree freeing all French civilians, estimated to number 400, held against their will in Iraq and Kuwait.

Hussein’s decision to issue a flurry of exit visas to foreigners, which one Western diplomat in Baghdad termed “bargaining in bodies,” was interpreted as an effort to smother opposition to his regime under a blanket of humanitarianism.

The release of the Americans “was a gesture of the president,” Salim Mansour, president of the U.S.-based American-Iraqi Foundation, told reporters. “He wants to have a peaceful resolution of the crisis. There was no deal for the release.”

The Americans were turned over to Mansour in Baghdad and are scheduled to leave Amman today for the United States by way of London.

In Washington, State Department spokeswoman Margaret Tutwiler said the 14 Americans include six from a list of 69 Americans in urgent need of medical care, two people with critically ill relatives in the United States and six college-age students--three summer interns at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad and three dependents of diplomats.

“All 14 had been in safe haven on U.S. property in Baghdad,” Tutwiler said, clearly referring to the embassy compound. “While it is important that these individuals are free, and we welcome it . . . there are still many Americans and foreign nationals who are not free to leave Iraq and Kuwait.”

At the same time, the State Department issued a message to U.S. citizens in Iraq and Kuwait, advising them that it would be a mistake to comply with an Iraqi order to register with immigration authorities before Nov. 5.

“We believe that Americans, particularly adult males, could put themselves at risk should they decide to register,” the department said.

If President Hussein hoped that by freeing some Americans he might soften the official U.S. attitude toward his seizure of Kuwait in August, he appears to have failed.

President Bush, campaigning Tuesday in Burlington, Vt., defended his Persian Gulf policy with an impassioned speech.

“I saw some signs coming in here that said ‘No War for Oil,’ ” Bush said of an estimated 100 protesters who picketed outside a GOP fund-raiser. “I can understand the sentiment by some of those young people. But I would simply say that the rape and the dismantling, the systematic dismantling of Kuwait, defies description.

“The starving of embassies--good God, this is 1990, and you see this man starving out small embassies in Kuwait. These are crimes against humanity. There can never be compromise--any compromise--with this kind of aggression.

” . . . So, it isn’t oil that we’re concerned about, it is aggression, and this aggression is not going to stand.”

The French maneuver began Monday when Hussein announced that he favors releasing their nationals and suggested that Iraq’s rubber-stamp Parliament render a decision. Press reports from Baghdad on Tuesday evening said the Parliament voted yes.

In Paris, a spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs stressed that liberation of the French hostages would not alter Paris’ support for U.N.-imposed sanctions against Iraq.

Ministry officials called the pending release “good news” but said there had been no negotiations for their freedom. Prime Minister Michel Rocard also declared that the Iraqi proposal was “unilateral.”

“The taking of hostages is odious,” the ministry said in a statement. “Their liberation is merely an atonement for that inadmissible act. France cannot lend itself to any negotiation whatsoever on this issue.”

Other foreign governments have taken the same line, accepting any unconditional offer of release and decrying the continued detention of others.

Meanwhile, French right-wing leader Jean-Marie Le Pen took credit for the promised release and said he will lead a delegation of his isolationist National Front political party to retrieve his compatriots.

“I am the one who made an appeal to Saddam Hussein to release all French hostages,” Le Pen said in an interview on French television. He has been one of the strongest critics of the French decision to join the international military force in Saudi Arabia.

On Tuesday morning, five Finns who had been detained arrived in Amman by plane from Baghdad. The Finnish-Arab Friendship Society had sought to free all 14 detained Finns but had to settle for bringing out three ailing men and two others chosen by lot.

“We are sad we had to leave the nine men behind,” said Timo Hentunen, 47, who was among the five who reached Amman on the Iraqi Airways morning flight. “There was some silence when we left.”

Meanwhile, former British Prime Minister Edward Heath, in Baghdad, won the release of more than 30 British civilians, most of them sick or elderly. They arrived in London from Baghdad on a jumbo jet of Britain’s Virgin Atlantic airlines.

Heath, hoping to bring out several hundred of his compatriots, had met twice with Foreign Minister Tarik Aziz since arriving in the Iraqi capital Saturday.

Hussein may score a public relations victory by dribbling out a handful of Americans or Britons every few weeks, but he is gambling in freeing all the French detainees.

Last month, Baghdad seized on a few phrases in French President Francois Mitterrand’s address to the U.N. General Assembly, suggesting--although Paris denied it--that France supported a peaceful resolution to the Persian Gulf crisis without conditions.

Within 24 hours, the French Foreign Ministry put out a statement declaring that Paris stood firmly with Washington, London and other Western and anti-Iraqi Arab capitals in insisting that there could be no discussions until Iraqi troops withdrew from Kuwait and the legitimate government returned to power.

But Baghdad has continued to try to drive a wedge between Paris and its Western allies, and some French politicians have taken a soft line on negotiations. However, if Hussein fails to turn public opinion in France with the release of all its hostages, it will have no others to deal in the future.

In the latest attempt to isolate the French, Iraq’s most important Western ally for more than 20 years leading up to the gulf crisis, Foreign Minister Aziz had fulsome praise for France.

“France is no longer an apostle of aggression in the region,” Aziz said, adding that he was aware of the presence of French troops and aircraft in Saudi Arabia but that they pose no threat.

“The French forces are present on the Arabian peninsula, but we have heard they will not be used militarily against Iraq,” he said.

More than 5,000 Westerners and Japanese are still held against their will in Iraq and Kuwait. Several hundred are labeled “special guests” of the state and have been taken to strategic sites around the two countries as “human shields” against military attack.

The largest contingent of detainees is British; 1,400 are held in Iraq and Kuwait.

The group of Americans who arrived Tuesday evening in Amman ranged from students in their 20s, who were in Iraq or Kuwait visiting parents in the Foreign Service when the invasion took place, to men in their 60s.

“This is a mixed group. Most of them are official Americans (diplomats); the rest are private citizens,” said the U.S. Embassy press attache, Jonathan Owen.

Mansour, the American-Iraqi Foundation leader, had said in Baghdad that the group would include sick and elderly persons, but none of the Americans appeared to be disabled.

One, William Hollingsworth of Huntsville, Ala., told a reporter he had no indication that he was leaving Baghdad and still did not know why he was chosen. Like many of the older men, he refused to say more, except to note that he was “attached to the embassy.”

Jared Scogna, 20, of Fairfax, Va., who had been vacationing with his father, a diplomat, said of those who remained behind: “There’s a lot of scared people (at the embassy) working hard to take care of a lot of Americans. It’s not a lot of fun leaving someone behind (a reference to his father).”

The 14 Americans were the first to leave Iraq since Oct. 10, when a large group of Arab-Americans from Kuwait was flown to London from Baghdad on a charter flight.

In Washington, the Saudi ambassador, Prince Bandar ibn Sultan, was summoned by Secretary of State James A. Baker III to explain comments earlier this week by his father, Prince Sultan ibn Abdulaziz, the Saudi defense minister, that indicated Saudi Arabia wants Kuwait to yield territory to Iraq in order to defuse the Persian Gulf crisis.

Bandar insisted that his government is not prepared to support any concessions to Iraq because “you can’t make aggression pay,” and he said the defense minister had stated only that border disputes can be settled peacefully.

Department spokeswoman Tutwiler said the discussion of Sultan’s comments took only about four minutes. Baker was satisfied with the explanation, she added.

Bandar said a full transcript of his father’s statement indicates he said that if Iraq withdraws totally and without conditions and restores the deposed emir of Kuwait to the throne, Saudi Arabia would have no objection to Kuwait entering negotiations with Iraq over Iraqi grievances that preceded the invasion.

Williams reported from Amman, Jordan, and Kempster from Washington. Times staff writer Rone Tempest, in Paris, also contributed to this report.