500 Kuwaiti Translators Called Up to Assist GIs : Military: Now in this country, they are to receive basic training. They would help allied troops in an invasion of their homeland.

About 500 Kuwaitis now in the United States, including many eager for a war to liberate their occupied nation, are being drafted for training as translators to be assigned with U.S. military units in Operation Desert Shield, Kuwaiti Embassy officials said Wednesday.

The Kuwaitis could serve as guides and help U.S. and allied forces distinguish Kuwaitis from Iraqis in a possible invasion of Iraqi-occupied Kuwait, said Sabti Bughaith, military attache at the Kuwaiti Embassy in Washington.

A spokesman at the Army’s Training and Doctrine Command at Ft. Monroe, Va., said a formal announcement is expected to be issued next week on an agreement between the Kuwaiti and U.S. governments covering the use of the translator-guides.

The draftees, called up by Kuwait’s government in exile, were selected on the basis of their English skills and, in some cases, prior military training, Bughaith said. They will undergo a week of basic military training, including firearms instruction, at Ft. Dix, N.J., starting next Monday, he said. From there, they will be sent to the Persian Gulf region.

In anticipation of a continued U.S. military presence inside a liberated Kuwait and the longstanding potential of terrorist acts, the Kuwaitis figure to help Americans distinguish friends from enemies.

Abdul Majeed Shatti, a Stanford-educated economist and one of the draftees, said Kuwaitis will be useful not only in distinguishing Kuwaitis from Iraqis but also in spotting members of Kuwait’s large Palestinian population. Some Palestinians have aligned themselves with Iraq while some remain sympathetic to Kuwait, he said.

Both Kuwaitis and Iraqis speak Arabic although a native of the region might be able to distinguish between the national accents. One U.S. military official said the American troops deployed in Saudi Arabia as part of Operation Desert Shield suffer from a shortage of Arabic-speakers. “This is somewhat of a fix,” he said, commenting on the recruitment of the Kuwaitis in the United States.

The draftees are the first to be called from a pool of about 2,000 who volunteered during a special convention of Kuwaitis at a Washington hotel in September. They are composed mostly of students here on government scholarships, as well as some individuals who were either attending conferences or vacationing in the United States when Iraq invaded the neighboring sheikdom on Aug. 2.

During the Washington meeting, many students expressed a desire to serve immediately, but Kuwaiti leaders advised them to be patient and continue their studies.

In recent months, many Kuwaiti students traveled on their own to the region, some joining exiled Kuwaitis who volunteered for military duty. Embassy officials say about 20,000 such volunteers are undergoing training in camps in Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.

Adding those volunteers to the 20,000 members of the regular Kuwaiti army who retreated into Kuwait, Bughaith estimates that about 40,000 Kuwaitis are now part of the multinational force arrayed against Iraq. Other estimates of the number of Kuwaiti soldiers and civilian volunteers have been lower.

The American contingent greatly outnumbers the Kuwaitis, but the figure of 40,000 would represent about 1 in 4 Kuwaiti males between the ages of 18 and 50, based on the nation’s 1985 census.

Several Kuwaitis in Southern California said they are excited by the call-up.

“My biggest worry was I wouldn’t be called,” said Said Ajmi, a 25-year-old film student at California State University, Long Beach. He was booked to leave on a flight late Wednesday from Los Angeles International Airport to Washington along with about 15 other Kuwaitis who live in Los Angeles, Orange and Riverside counties.

“I want to be with them there,” Ajmi said. “I feel it’s my duty to be with them.”

Ajmi, his roommate Ahmed Khalid and several other Kuwaitis in Southern California who were called to duty say they have been preparing for war since the Iraqi invasion by exercising and visiting shooting ranges. Ajmi said he learned to shoot by hunting fowl while growing up in Kuwait.

An electrical engineering student at Cal State L.A. named Bashar Eisa said that in addition to practicing with his shotgun, he visited a library to study the workings of the Soviet-made Kalashnikov assault rifle in case he were to lift one from a dead Iraqi.

Eisa, 23, said he was eager to serve. “Finally it came,” he said, of a letter Monday calling him to duty.