Iraq Still Holds Portion of Kuwait, Officer Says : Military: About 300 soldiers haven’t budged from emirate, he reports.

More than a month after President Bush declared Kuwait liberated, Iraqi forces still control a small pocket of the emirate’s territory, a Kuwaiti tank commander said Monday.

About 300 Iraqi soldiers remain inside Kuwait, just south of the Iraqi port of Umm al Qasr, Capt. Nasser Duwaila said. He badly wants to get them out.

“This is our land,” said Duwaila, the acting commander of Kuwait’s 7th Armored Battalion. “Kuwait is not free if there is one Iraqi soldier on our land.”

Duwaila said there were no Kuwaiti officers in authority when allied units first moved into the area, apparently producing brief uncertainty about the border’s location.

“This is a big mistake here--you must do something,” Duwaila recalled telling allied officers when he reached the area later. “They said, ‘No, there’s a cease-fire.’ ”

Bush called off the pursuit of Iraqi forces on Feb. 27, declaring that “Kuwait is liberated, Iraq’s army is defeated.”

The area in question covers about two square miles, according to Duwaila. He said the Iraqis occupy scattered Kuwaiti military facilities, including a barracks and an observation post.

A senior U.S. Army commander at the border area, Col. Bill Nash of the 3rd Armored Division’s 1st Brigade, said he knew of the Kuwaiti complaints but “our task is to defend the DML (the demarcation line set at the end of hostilities), not the international boundary.”

Meanwhile, in Iraq, where Kurds and Shiite Muslims have been rebelling against President Saddam Hussein, Kurdish rebels retreated on foot into their traditional mountain strongholds, surrendering more urban centers under a steady onslaught by Iraqi loyalist forces .

Baghdad said its troops had retaken Dihok, Irbil and Zakhu--the last major cities in the north held by the Kurds.

A spokesman for the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan in Damascus, Syria, denied that government troops have seized Zakhu. However, Turks living in Silopi near the border with Iraq--about six miles from Zakhu--said they witnessed the last stand of the rebels there.

After the fall of Zakhu, Iraqi troops reportedly recaptured the border crossing to Turkey at Habur, astride the main Baghdad-Europe highway and the nearby Iraq-Turkey oil pipeline.

Thousands of Kurds, fearing government reprisals, were fleeing into the mountains along the Iranian and Turkish borders, turning roadways into ribbons of humanity.

Free-lance writer Hugh Pope in Ankara, Turkey, contributed to this report.