2,000 Soviets a Tough Issue for Baghdad : Diplomacy: Technicians have not been allowed to leave. Iraq says it’s a matter of money, but Moscow is not so sure.

The Iraqi and Soviet governments wrangled Monday over the destiny of at least 2,000 Soviet technicians still prevented from leaving Iraq.

Iraq has refused to permit them to leave until Moscow pays up on canceled contracts for oil, water and military projects that will be suspended as the workers depart. Although both governments say the issue is economic, there is an undercurrent of Iraqi resentment at having been abandoned by its onetime weapons benefactor.

“At this time, everything is a part of the gulf crisis,” said Leonid Negria, a spokesman for the Soviet Embassy in Baghdad.

A delegation from Moscow arrived in Baghdad late Sunday to try to work out the release of the Soviets.

Iraq has ridiculed the Soviets for withholding their U.N. Security Council veto on anti-Iraq resolutions. Moscow, the Iraqis say, was bribed by the promise of food aid from the West and $1 billion in assistance from Saudi Arabia.

Iraq offered the Soviets, who are facing winter shortages, food aid in the form of dates, one of Iraq’s biggest and best-known agricultural exports. Because of the worldwide trade boycott of Iraq, there are plenty of dates available this season.

The Hussein government was also irritated by reports that Soviet military officials might give the Americans information that, in the event of war, could be used to counter Iraqi radar and missile guidance systems, many of which are Soviet-supplied.

Before Iraq’s Aug. 2 invasion of Kuwait, about 9,000 Soviet citizens worked under contract for the Iraqi government, many of them in oil and hydroelectric projects and as military advisers. It was not known how many of the Soviets remaining are in military rather than civilian fields.

Military advisers are probably located at sites that would be potential targets if the United States and its allies decide to drive Iraq out of Kuwait.

On Monday, Iraq repeated its insistance that it will never leave Kuwait, which it termed an indivisible part of the country. “Our belief in Kuwait as part of Iraq is unshakable,” declared a communique from the ruling Revolutionary Command Council. “That Kuwait is our 19th province is a fact. We reject surrender.”

The communique was part of a defiant statement in which the council, which functions as President Saddam Hussein’s inner circle, fired another salvo in the ongoing calendar war with the United States.

Proposed talks between the two countries are hung up on a dispute over the date of a proposed Baghdad meeting between Hussein and U.S. Secretary of State James A. Baker III. Iraq wants a Jan. 12 meeting, Washington one no later than Jan. 3, so as not to push up against a Jan. 15 deadline set by the United Nations for Iraq to pull out of Kuwait.

“We reject the dictation of dates from one side as the President of the United States wants,” said the council statement.

Joseph C. Wilson IV, charge d’affaires at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad and the highest-ranking American here, met with Iraqi officials to see if Iraq would back off its demand that the Baghdad meeting take place Jan. 12. The meeting was described as “uneventful.”

While the deadlock with Washington continued, Iraqi officials took heart that the European Community had not precluded a round of talks with Aziz despite tough stands voiced during Monday’s NATO meeting in Brussels. NATO foreign ministers did not object to contacts with Aziz if the talks were limited to pressing Iraq to leave Kuwait unconditionally.

Iraq views Europe as largely receptive to its contention that general Middle East topics should be part of any discussion of Kuwait, and Iraqi Foreign Ministry officials were hopeful of getting an invitation to Italy, which holds the rotating chairmanship of the 12-member community.

Reports from Kuwait describe an increasingly garrisoned city, with tanks taking up camouflaged positions and thousands of soldiers pouring in.

The last Western diplomat to leave Kuwait called the city “a mess” and said Monday that resistance to Iraq’s occupation is continuing but at a low level.

The diplomat, British Ambassador Michael Weston, had arrived in Baghdad from Kuwait on Sunday. He left for London on Monday. Like his U.S. counterpart, who had already left, Weston spent four months in an embassy cut off by Iraqi troops.

“I had to leave by the first-floor window because the Iraqis barricaded the front door,” he said.

“Kuwait is a mess. It was a very clean city, and now it’s run down,” he said. “Tanks do make an awful mess.”

When Weston left, there were still enough supplies for him and an assistant, Larry Banks, to hang on for a few more weeks. They had augmented their diet with a vegetable garden.

Thirty-five British citizens were left behind in Kuwait, Weston said. Hundreds of others left on hostage freedom flights after spending weeks in hiding for fear that the Iraqis would round them up and send them to strategic installations as shields against attack.

They kept in contact with the embassy by a clandestine system of message carriers from Australia, Ireland and other Commonwealth countries who were evidently not being sought for detention.

“They were the heroes,” Weston said of the messengers.

The ambassador, who had served in Kuwait previously when the mini-state became independent in 1961, lamented his departure, saying, “The Kuwaiti people left behind were very sad. I look forward to their government coming back.”

Resistance to Iraqi rule is “determined,” he maintained, but for the moment, they are “not blowing things up.”

Echoing Washington’s position, Britain announced that Ambassador Weston’s departure did not indicate a formal closing of the embassy, which Iraq had demanded.