Iraq, U.S. Start Juggle for Freedom : Logistics: The Assembly formally approves letting all foreigners leave. American officials work on getting the hostages home.

The Iraqi National Assembly on Friday formally approved the release of all foreign hostages, and U.S. officials here immediately began scrambling to work out with Baghdad the many logistic obstacles in hopes of getting the Americans home for Christmas.

“The political decision has been made. Now it’s just the logistics,” one U.S. Embassy official said.

“I can assure you that we’ll get them out just as fast as we possibly can,” added Joseph C. Wilson IV, charge d’affaires at the embassy and the senior American diplomat here.

But Wilson declined to speculate just when that might be. “It will all depend” on what the Iraqi government requires of the freed hostages in the way of documentation and exit visas, he said.

The Iraqi Parliament’s pro-forma vote came a day after President Saddam Hussein had asked it to take the action. In his message to Parliament, he said the hostage-taking was justified because it has “deterred war.” Hussein also boasted that Iraq has now completed its war preparations in the event that recently initiated diplomatic overtures between Washington and Baghdad prove to be fruitless and the international military alliance now deployed in the Persian Gulf launches an offensive against Iraq.

After more than an hour of speech-making, the 250 members of the National Assembly voted overwhelmingly by a show of hands to formally ratify Hussein’s decision to release the hostages. There were 15 votes in opposition, which did not surprise diplomatic observers here.

One member of Parliament urged that British and American hostages be excluded from Hussein’s new policy, saying that those countries “do not deserve” to have their citizens released because of their strong anti-Iraq policies. She said the United States and Britain were behind the United Nations-imposed sanctions that, she said, have caused starvation of Iraqi children.

Another assembly member suggested that the release of hostages be delayed until after Jan. 15--the deadline set by a U.N. Security Council resolution authorizing military action against Baghdad if Iraq does not pull out of Kuwait by then.

Iraqi Foreign Minister Tarik Aziz is expected in Washington later this month, at President Bush’s invitation, to discuss the Persian Gulf crisis. And Secretary of State James A. Baker III is expected to visit Baghdad sometime after Aziz’s visit to Washington and before the Jan. 15 U.N. deadline.

Referring to those meetings, one assembly member said Friday that the hostage release would “give new dynamism to Iraq’s negotiator.”

Another speaker asserted that the foreign hostages had been “kindly treated here and I believe this will have a good impression” throughout the world. Many of the hostages have spoken of food shortages and a lack of adequate clothing, but none have said they were physically mistreated.

Much of Friday’s parliamentary “debate” consisted of strong anti-Bush rhetoric and lavish praise for Hussein. And most of the 10 members who spoke simply reiterated, nearly verbatim, the pronouncement that Hussein made in his Thursday announcement that the hostages would be set free.

Across town at the Mansour Melia Hotel, where dozens of Western and Japanese hostages were reunited this week with their loved ones, news of the assembly vote touched off another round of hearty cheers and applause. Their partying had begun in earnest Thursday evening, shortly after Hussein’s decision was announced by Radio Baghdad.

According to Wilson and other U.S. officials here, among the many issues that still need to be resolved are questions such as precisely what paperwork the Iraqis will require of the hostages before allowing them to leave.

If Baghdad requires the hostages to have exit visas, they will need to go to the government’s residency office with photographs and letters from their employers saying that they haved fulfilled their contractual obligations, the official said. That could cause long delays, the official added.

“We hope the Iraqis will waive that and, instead, just require foreign passports,” the official said. “We’ve made that approach,” added Wilson, saying that he had not received a response from the Iraqis.

But even if the exit visas are waived, another embassy official said, that could still pose problems because most of the hostages have had their passports confiscated. “We’ll need to find them,” the official said. “That’s the big hurdle.”

Still another question is whether Baghdad will fly the several thousand foreign hostages out of Iraq on Iraqi Airways flights or permit each government to charter its own refugee airlifts into Baghdad.

In addition, according to the U.S. official, “We also have people in deep hiding who are not answering their telephones or doors. “And we need to get word to them and persuade them to come out.”

This might be accomplished, however, via broadcasts on the Voice of America, the British Broadcasting Corp. and by word of mouth, the official said.

Also unclear is whether Baghdad now will permit U.S. officials here to go to Kuwait to help process the repatriation of Americans there. Eight U.S. diplomats, including Ambassador W. Nathaniel Howell III, remain in the beleaguered U.S. Embassy in Kuwait and hundreds of U.S. citizens are believed to remain in hiding in that occupied country.

“It’s just a big mess,” the official said in an interview, adding: “We hope to work things out in the next 24 to 36 hours.”

Wilson said that any U.S. government advice to Americans in hiding “will have to come out of Washington.” Hundreds of Americans also have been living in safe locations in Iraq since early August.

At the Mansour Melia Hotel, meanwhile, 17 American hostages and 18 of their relatives who arrived here Wednesday night passed their time eating, drinking and otherwise spending time together.

For today, the group of relatives has been invited for a trip to Babylon, but the women among them have politely told their would-be hosts, the Iraqi Women’s Federation, that they would beg off unless the men are also permitted to go.

And on Sunday, a large multi-denominational church service is being planned for all the foreign hostages and their families, including those from Japan and Britain who also have been reunited this week with their relatives. “We all want to go to that,” said Barbara Smiley of Los Angeles, whose husband was brought to the hotel on Thursday from a strategic Iraqi site where he had been held.