Last U.S. Envoys Leave Kuwait Post : Gulf crisis: Ambassador Howell leads the final planeload of U.S. citizens to safety in West. ‘We did not <i> close </i> the embassy,’ he asserts. ‘The flag flies.’

The hostage saga for Americans in Iraq and Kuwait ended Thursday with the departure of W. Nathaniel Howell III, the U.S. ambassador to Kuwait who held out in his besieged embassy for nearly four months.

“The flag flies” there still, Howell said when he arrived in Germany as part of the last planeload of Americans to come out of Iraq. The embassy compound, which he abandoned after 110 days of steadily dwindling food supplies and shortages of electricity and hot water, will remain technically open although unstaffed.

Smiling and chewing gum, the ambassador told reporters at the Frankfurt airport that the 31 Americans on board the Iraqi Airways jetliner with him represented “all the Americans who wanted to leave Kuwait.”

“We’re very happy to be here,” Howell said. “We’re very delighted that all Americans who wanted to leave Kuwait did.

“This morning, I closed the embassy,” he began, then corrected himself: “We did not close the embassy, but vacated it. The flag flies.”

Howell declined to describe conditions in Kuwait. When asked how the embassy refugees managed to survive, the diplomat grinned broadly and said, “That’s a secret.”

In the wake of Iraq’s Aug. 2 invasion of Kuwait, President Saddam Hussein declared the neighboring sheikdom his country’s 19th province, and he ordered all foreign embassies there to close by Aug. 24. Most complied, eventually leaving only the British and Americans as holdouts. The British ambassador and his staff came out with the American diplomats Thursday.

For the first three months of the crisis, the Americans in the embassy, determined to defy Iraq’s orders to vacate, were denied supplies and lived on embassy food stocks--eventually little but canned tuna--and boiled water from their swimming pool. Early this month, the Iraqi occupation forces began allowing them small amounts of new provisions.

Howell was accompanied by his deputy chief of mission, Barbara Bodine, his three other embassy aides and a number of Americans who had taken refuge inside the compound. Wearing a scraggly white beard and a bright green jacket, Howell appeared healthy. A U.S. Consulate spokesman, Craig Springer, said none of the returning Americans required medical attention.

Before the takeoff from Baghdad, a U.S. Embassy spokesman there also had a succinct comment on Howell’s condition: “He’s a tough old dog.”

The Americans were part of a total of 94 passengers aboard the U.S.-chartered Boeing 707 that first flew from Baghdad to Kuwait city Thursday to pick up foreigners, returned to the Iraqi capital for more passengers, then departed for Germany. Also aboard were 25 Britons, 16 Canadians, nine Japanese and a scattering of other nationalities, according to the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad.

A spokesman for the U.S. Consulate in Frankfurt said the Americans, including the five diplomats, would stay here overnight and fly to the United States today.

U.S. officials in Baghdad say that no more charter flights of Americans are planned. About 500 U.S. citizens remain, mostly in Kuwait, and are not expected to request departure. Most of those left are spouses and children in Arab families and consider either Iraq or Kuwait their home.

Although greeted by U.S. Ambassador to Germany Vernon A. Walters, Howell either eschewed or was not offered what might seem to be routine diplomatic courtesies. He waited in baggage claim along with the other passengers, then was escorted through the sprawling airport with shouting reporters trailing him up two flights of stairs to a drab chain hotel adjacent to the airport, where he was to spend the night.

Howell stopped long enough to accept a “Free Kuwait” button from a Kuwaiti woman whose family of eight came to the airport clad in black sweat shirts to “thank the Americans” for supporting their homeland.

The ambassador appeared to emerge as a hero to those who had shared the experience with him.

“He’s a hero, like John Wayne,” Jack Rinehart of Stover, Mo., one of those trapped in the embassy before his release, was quoted as saying by the Associated Press. “He drank the same dirty water; he slept outside with the flies and the heat.”

An Irishman with a cast on his leg was taken off the plane in a wheelchair, but his name and details about his injury were not immediately available. When asked how he was hurt, he laughed and said, “Celebrating!” as he was wheeled away.

Howell’s afternoon flight capped a week of emotional departures of hundreds of foreigners from Iraq and Kuwait. Many of the hostages--including American, Japanese, British, Italian and French citizens--had been held as so-called human shields at Iraqi military and industrial sites to deter a potential U.S.-led attack. Others floated in limbo in Baghdad or hid out in Kuwait.

In a surprise move, Iraqi President Hussein announced last week that he would release all foreigners, claiming that the purpose of their captivity had been served. He said the stay of the “guests,” as he called them, gave Iraq time to build up its military forces to confront an expected invasion.

According to Western and Arab diplomats, the visit of three of Iraq’s Arab allies to Baghdad last week helped persuade Hussein to release the hostages. Jordan’s King Hussein, Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat and Ali Salim Bidh, the vice president of Yemen, all spoke with the Iraqi leader and advised him that the hostages were more a cause for war than a deterrent.

At one point, President Bush had indicated he was “tired” of the treatment of Americans in Iraq and Kuwait, raising speculation that the embassy drama might provide a spark to ignite a U.S. drive to push Iraq out of the sheikdom.

During his recent visit to South America, Bush effectively reversed himself and indicated that the exit of hostages from Iraq and Kuwait could in fact free his hand for military moves.

In any event, U.S. officials in Washington insist that the departure of Howell does not indicate acceptance of Iraq’s annexation of Kuwait.

Over the months, embassy after embassy in Kuwait shuttered as hardships mounted on diplomats who stayed behind. At one point, an East German official who ventured from his home looking for water was taken into custody and flown to Baghdad. Iraqi troops once stormed the French Embassy but declared the move a mistake and retreated.

To celebrate Howell’s safe departure, American officials still in Baghdad held a champagne party Thursday and promised to take a day off.

Williams reported from Baghdad and Jones from Frankfurt.