Remains of 5 Americans Handed Over : Exchanges: Turmoil and confusion in Iraq hamper efforts to repatriate hundreds of enemy POWs.

The remains of five American servicemen turned over by Baghdad were en route to the United States on Wednesday as civil unrest in Iraq appeared to threaten efforts to forge a permanent cease-fire.

The remains of the Americans, along with those of eight Britons, were flown by the Red Cross earlier from Baghdad to a U.S. military mortuary at the Dhahran air base in Saudi Arabia, where forensics experts examined them.

The return of the remains came after a two-day delay because the internal strife in much of Iraq delayed the transport of the bodies.

The remains of the five Americans were being flown to the central U.S. military mortuary at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, a Pentagon official said.

The Pentagon had originally announced that the remains of 14 allied dead were to be turned over. There was no explanation for the discrepancy in numbers.

One of the Americans was identified by the Red Cross as U.S. Navy A-6 pilot Lt. William T. Costen, 27, of St. Louis.

The turmoil in Iraq has also hampered efforts by relief agencies to send hundreds of Iraqi POWs home, officials said.

Anti-government rebels and troops loyal to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein have been battling in several southern and northern cities.

“It appears that Iraq is having some problems,” a U.S. officer said.

More than 60,000 Iraqi POWs are being held in Saudi Arabia. Officials of the International Committee of the Red Cross have been trying since Monday to bus an initial group of several hundred to an Iraqi border crossing.

So far, they have not been successful. On at least one occasion, the Iraqis reached the border but no Iraqi official showed up to take charge of them, Saudi sources said. The POWs had to be returned to a Saudi camp.

The fate of the POWs remains in limbo. A symbolic group of 294 Iraqis was repatriated last week in exchange for the return of allied prisoners of war.

The return of allied remains and the release of POWs are conditions set by Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf, senior U.S. commander in the Gulf, that must be met before a permanent cease-fire can be signed.

In other developments Wednesday:

* Demonstrators in the northern Iraq oil city of Mosul stormed two prisons and released 4,000 political prisoners, according to Kurdish leaders who claimed to control almost 75% of Iraqi Kurdistan.

* Bloody street protests were reported in Baghdad and Iraq admitted for the first time that the country was in the grip of an uprising against President Hussein.

* Iraqi opposition groups meeting in Beirut ended a three-day conference, pledging to fight on against the regime and agreeing to a set of resolutions reflecting a spirit of compromise and cooperation among the 23 disparate groups represented.

* Japan transferred the equivalent of $8.6 billion to its Gulf Peace Fund, fulfilling its pledge of aid for the U.S.-led Gulf forces, a government spokesman said.

Kurds fighting Iraqi loyalists in the north claimed to control three-quarters of Iraqi Kurdistan. A spokesman for the Democratic Party of Kurdistan said in Paris that thousands of refugees are flocking back from Iran to join the uprising.

He said rebels have surrounded Mosul, Iraq’s third-largest city with a population of about 300,000, stormed the main jail and another prison and released all prisoners.

Tehran Radio said that “massive demonstrations” in several parts of the capital led to clashes with security forces in which people were killed or wounded on both sides.

In Washington, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher confirmed that unrest has spread to Shiite neighborhoods of Baghdad.

Reporting on information obtained by the U.S. government on the confusing and fluid situation in Iraq, Boucher said he could provide no details about fighting in the Iraqi capital.

He said Iraq’s military forces in the Kurdish north have been reinforced, apparently an indication that rebels were recording gains.

“Government control, when it is established, can often dissipate quickly,” Boucher said.

Tehran Radio and Iran’s news agency IRNA said battles raged all day Wednesday between loyalist forces and rebels in Basra, Iraq’s second-largest city, and around the northern oil city of Kirkuk.

The Iraqi government newspaper Al Jumhouriya, referring directly to the two-week-old uprising, said “traitors” engaged in rebellion are doomed to failure. It accused the United States of seeking to fragment Iraq.

The Iraqi opposition factions meeting in Beirut included Arab nationalists, Shiite fundamentalists, Communists and Kurds, representing the most powerful and active members of the anti-Hussein forces.

Their final declaration included an appeal to Iraqi loyalists in the military to join the opposition.

Another resolution called for setting up a transitional “coalition government” after Hussein is overthrown. All the opposition groups would be represented.

In Tokyo, chief government spokesman Misoji Sakamoto made no mention of the fact that the $8.6-billion donation fell short of the $9 billion Japan had pledged to the U.S.-led Gulf War effort.

Marilyn Raschka in Beirut and Times staff writer Norman Kempster in Washington contributed to this report.