Freed Hostages Headed Home

The first wave of American hostages freed under Saddam Hussein’s blanket release headed home today. But even as it relented and released foreign captives, Iraq declared that it would not compromise “one iota” over Kuwait.

U.S. consular officials in Germany said 152 Americans and four Canadians left Frankfurt on a Pan Am flight headed for Andrews Air Force Base, near Washington. Provisions aboard included hamburgers and champagne.

While expressing relief at the freeing of the hostages, the Bush Administration wants nothing less than Iraq’s total withdrawal from Kuwait. But the Baghdad government’s information minister, Latif Jassim, said today that any talk of an Iraqi withdrawal from the emirate is “nothing but dreams and wishful thinking.”

“Kuwait is for Iraqi, whether in the past, present or future,” Jassim said in a statement carried by the official Iraqi News Agency. “We will not compromise one iota on Kuwaiti territory, its waters or the money and investment of the buried Al Sabah dynasty,” he said, referring to Kuwait’s deposed ruling family.

In Washington, Defense Secretary Dick Cheney said today that Iraq’s release of foreign hostages should not raise hopes for a peaceful resolution of the Persian Gulf crisis.

While saying that the release was “obviously very good news” for the hostages and their families, Cheney said it did not mean Iraq is backing away from its occupation of Kuwait.

“The illegal, immoral, illicit act of Saddam Hussein in holding hundreds of American hostages against their will for several months appears to be coming to an end,” Cheney said in remarks to a defense industry group.

“But I don’t believe Saddam Hussein deserves any credit for stopping a practice that obviously is abhorrent to the civilized world. He has to rank as one of the world’s all-time hostage-takers,” Cheney said.

In the hostage exodus, about 277 Britons gathered at a downtown Baghdad hotel today to prepare to fly to London. Four Americans and an unspecified number of other Westerners also were to be given seats on the British-chartered plane, which can carry 350 passengers, British consular officials said.

The Americans who left Frankfurt today were among about 175 former captives who had arrived a day earlier from Baghdad aboard a U.S.-chartered Iraqi Airways jet.

The flight from Baghdad also included 101 former British hostages, who were flown this morning from Frankfurt to London, where they were greeted by jubilant relatives.