2 More American POWs Freed; Iraq Beset by Turmoil : Postwar disorder: Hundreds of Kuwaitis and 40 journalists also are released. Fighting is reported spreading in the north and south of the country.

Baghdad released hundreds of Kuwaitis, two U.S. prisoners of war and 40 journalists Friday in a display of postwar order that clashed with persistent evidence that the regime of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein is confronted with the threat of chaos.

The releases proceeded smoothly and on schedule. But elsewhere in Iraq, Hussein’s government continued to struggle with rebellion and desertion.

Fighting between Republican Guard forces loyal to Hussein and rebels, including both civilians and regular army forces, was reported to have spread northwest from a dozen small towns around the Gulf port city of Basra to the El Thawara district of Baghdad. Kurdish rebels claimed to have captured large areas in northern Iraq.

The Kurds broadcast orders to “coordinate and begin action immediately,” and Iraqi opposition leaders, in a statement issued in Damascus, Syria, called for donations of food and medicine from the world community in their efforts to overthrow Hussein’s ruling Revolutionary Command Council.

Meanwhile, the council acted to shore up the beleaguered Iraqi army, announcing a week’s extension of the original Friday deadline for deserters and soldiers absent without leave to return to their units without penalty.

Baghdad Radio blamed a shortage of transportation for the failure of troops to refill the ranks by the original deadline, but observers said the problem appeared to reflect a widespread collapse of discipline.

In other developments:

Iranian President Hashemi Rafsanjani expressed sympathy with those attempting to overthrow Hussein and urged the Iraqi dictator and his Arab Baath Socialist Party to surrender “to the will of the people.” It was the first time the government of Iran has openly backed the rebellion in Iraq.

The U.S. military announced plans to repatriate more than 60,000 Iraqi prisoners of war. The American command said that, under an agreement reached Thursday with Iraqi officials, several hundred Iraqis per day will be sent home by truck and bus from POW camps in northern Saudi Arabia.

A human rights group based in New York warned of a possible massacre of dissident Iraqi civilians by Hussein loyalists and of reprisals by Kuwaitis against Palestinians living there. Middle East Watch asked U.N. Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar to help stop abuses in the two nations. “The cessation of hostilities does not mean that the Security Council’s responsibilities have ended,” the group said.

The World Society for the Protection of Animals said it is raising money for the non-human victims of the Gulf War--specifically, the surviving animals in the Kuwait National Zoo and birds imperiled by oil spills in the Persian Gulf. The group said it has already provided veterinarians, medicines, food and water for the zoo.

Return of the Missing

After steadfastly insisting for the last several days that it had no more POWs, or any of the 40 missing foreign journalists, Baghdad gave over both Friday--including two Americans who the Pentagon said appear to be U.S. servicemen not previously listed as missing.

Red Cross President Cornelio Sommaruga said in Washington that the Iraqis have now assured his organization that “there are no more U.S. POWs.”

The two were variously identified as 1st Lt. Gavin or Kevin Rice or Ries, and Pvt. Allen Jeoffrey Allen or William Jeffrey, according to an unnamed spokesman on Baghdad Radio.

The U.S. government initially said the names “don’t match any names that we’ve got,” but later, the Pentagon said that the two, reportedly found in Basra and taken to Baghdad, “appear to be U.S. servicemen who had not been officially listed as missing in action.”

The 40 journalists--tired, cold, penniless and wrapped in blankets apparently provided by their captors--were dropped off Friday at the Diana Hotel alongside the Tigris River.

They had been captured over the weekend, during their “illegal presence in Basra,” Baghdad Radio said. They were said to have been seized by loyalist soldiers in separate groups at a bridge that had been knocked out by allied bombing.

They were rounded up, taken to Basra University, and held there for two or three days before being trucked to Baghdad, according to Iraqi officials.

“We were all well taken care of,” said Cable News Network correspondent Greg LaMotte, one of 11 Americans in the group. “The most distressing aspect to all of this,” said British reporter Andrew Simmons of Independent Television News, “has been the fact that we’ve not been able to know whether or not our families have known we were safe.”

Insurgent Shiite Muslim groups had said that the Iraqi government was holding the reporters prisoner to keep them from covering the rebellions in southern Iraq.

Sommaruga said the group was expected to travel overland to Jordan today .

Seventy more foreign journalists who were expelled from Iraq arrived Friday in Jordan, thus emptying Baghdad of almost the last Western witnesses.

“We were told we’d be allowed back soon,” CBS reporter Allen Pizzey said.

The group was told it was being expelled because Iraqi Ministry of Information workers--”minders” who had virtually stood at reporters’ elbows to monitor their work--needed a rest, and the government wanted to improve media facilities, he said.

Speculation persisted, though, that their expulsion might precede a no-holds-barred crackdown on uprisings reported throughout Iraq and in some Shiite neighborhoods of the capital city.

Iraq permitted a British television technician and a Yugoslav national who is a photographer for Associated Press to stay behind, with no explanation given, as well as some Arab and Third World journalists.

In buses, trucks and on foot, groups of hundreds of Kuwaitis rounded up during the Iraqi occupation of their country began returning home, the first of about 6,200 abducted during seven months, according to Dr. Abdul Rahman Muhailan of the Red Crescent. Iraqis admitted taking another 2,089 in the final days of the war, he said.

Rebellion in Iraq

Iraqi rebel spokesmen in London said their forces controlled Basra and four other cities along the Shatt al Arab and Euphrates River valley, despite major counteroffensives by troops loyal to Hussein.

Some of the heaviest clashes between rebels and Hussein’s forces were near the cities of Najaf and Karbala, the sites of two of Iraq’s holiest Shiite shrines, according to Cairo Radio.

Kurdish exile leader Jalal Talabani told reporters in Damascus, Syria, that Kurdish irregulars were battling Iraqi government forces in a number of towns in northern Iraq. He said the rebels had captured the headquarters of Hussein’s 32nd Army Division and now control the northern province of Sulaymaniyah.

A Shiite Muslim opposition leader, Jawad Maliki, accused Hussein of using mustard gas, heavy artillery and helicopter gunships to crush the uprisings and said casualties number in the hundreds.

And Syrian Vice President Abdul-Halim Khaddam said in Damascus that Hussein is waging a war against his own people with the planes he kept out of the war against the allies.

“We wondered why the Iraqi warplanes were banned from defending the Iraqi airspace and were sent outside Iraq during the war,” Khaddam said. “They are now bombing Iraq and the Iraqis.”

The assertions of Khaddam and the rebels could not immediately be confirmed, but the New York Times also reported in its Saturday editions that Iraqi officials had authorized using chemical weapons against anti-government rebels, and the Bush Administration had warned Iraq not to do it.

Allied intelligence agencies intercepted communications from Iraq’s military command in Baghdad authorizing the use of gas against rebels in the cities of Najaf and Karbala, the newspaper said. An Administration source, who was not named, said Iraq had been “authoritatively warned” not to use gas against the insurgents.

Despite the rebellion he reportedly is facing in the southeast, north and some neighborhoods of the capital, Hussein appears able to retain his grip over Iraq, Defense Secretary Dick Cheney said in Washington.

Cable News Network’s Peter Arnett, for a time the sole Western journalist in Iraq, agreed, saying that while Hussein is faced “socially, militarily and politically” with “major problems,” he “does have the forces” to effect control.

Actually, Hussein’s greatest threat may be from top officials, rather than civil unrest, according to some U.S. intelligence assessments.

“He needs to be more concerned about the men in uniform closest to him,” said Rep. Dave McCurdy (D-Okla.), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.

Iran’s Rafsanjani

The predominantly Shiite government of Iran, which had proclaimed neutrality during the Gulf War, openly backed the rebellion in Iraq on Friday. Shiite Muslims in Iraq have played a leading role in the efforts to overthrow Hussein and his Sunni Muslim minority.

“Saddam is making a mistake while suppressing the people,” Iranian President Rafsanjani told worshipers gathered at Tehran University for prayers. “This is his worst mistake. . . . If the Baathists will not listen to the voice of the people, it will be their last mistake.”

Overtly dipping into his neighbor’s anguished politics, the turbanned cleric told his Tehran audience, “We in Iran are ready for cooperation” if Hussein agrees to the demands of his insurgent opposition, whose leaders in and out of the country have issued calls ranging from abolition of Baathist rule to some sort of power sharing.

Rafsanjani’s phrasing suggested that Iran would not be ready to cooperate unless the demands are met.

Iranian Vice President Hassan Habibi met with Iraqi opposition leaders in Damascus on Friday in an apparent show of support for the postwar uprising against Hussein.

An Iraqi opposition source said the meeting shows that Iran “respects the will and freedom of the Iraqi people to choose a successor for Saddam.”

Iran still holds most of Baghdad’s top-of-the-line warplanes, flown to sanctuary there during the allied air war over Iraq. Rafsanjani has said they would be returned after the war, but with Iraqi Shiites reportedly fighting government troops and security forces, a decision to return the planes would be more difficult.

The Iranian president’s remarks, broadcast by Tehran Radio, were monitored in Amman and Cyprus.

Iraqi POWs

The number of Iraqi prisoners of war sent back daily from desert camps in Saudi Arabia may increase as kinks in the system are worked out, said Jean Rigopoulo, spokesman for the International Committee of the Red Cross, which is overseeing all prisoner exchanges.

The first Iraqi POWs to be returned--a group of 294--were flown to Baghdad earlier this week.

An exchange of POWs is part of an agreement worked out between U.S. commander Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf and Iraqi military officers. The decision to start sending more Iraqis home Monday came out of a second meeting in Riyadh on Thursday.

Several hundred Iraqis will be put on buses for the Iraqi border Monday, and, if all goes well, the procedure will be repeated daily until all POWs who want to return to Iraq are released.

While sources say most Iraqi POWs are willing to return home, Saudi officials have said that many of the Iraqis are refusing to return, saying they do not want to live under Hussein’s regime. This is especially true for several hundred deserters.

Many Iraqis apparently thought their capture meant they would be sent to the United States or other Western countries. They are disillusioned to find that is not the case.

“It’s tragic,” said a source.

Before he is sent home, each Iraqi is asked in private by a Red Cross official whether he wants to return to his country. Those who refuse eventually are turned over to the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees.

Williams reported from Amman, Jordan, and Wilkinson reported from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.