U.S. Forces to Leave Southern Iraq by May 10 : Gulf: All U.N. observers are expected to be in place then. Iraqi forces also will withdraw.

All U.S. and Iraqi military forces are expected to withdraw from the southern Iraqi border zone by May 10, concluding the two-month-long American occupation of the region and completing the deployment of U.N. observers along the Iraqi-Kuwaiti border, a U.N. spokesman said Thursday.

An additional 40 U.N. observers are scheduled to move into the nine-mile-deep demilitarized zone today, accompanied by infantry troops and a support unit, said Majid Fayad, spokesman for the United Nations Iraq-Kuwait Observer Mission, usually referred to as UNIKOM.

UNIKOM observers have now been deployed over about half the 125-mile-long border zone. Stationing of all 300 observers in the region is expected to be completed by Monday, clearing the way for full withdrawal of all military forces from the zone, Fayad said.

In other developments in the region:

* U.S. and allied military forces will start building a second camp in northern Iraq today to help lure more Kurdish refugees down from the mountains, the allied command said Wednesday.

* Iranian media suggested that Western aid being sent to Iran for Kurdish refugees is composed of largely inferior goods, some of it fit only “for animals.”

* Sporadic clashes reportedly continued in southern Iraq between troops loyal to President Saddam Hussein and pro-Iranian Shiite Muslim rebels.

Maj. Gen. Gunther Greindl, the Austrian commander of the UNIKOM observer force, concluded a series of meetings with senior Iraqi officials in Baghdad on Wednesday and received assurances of Iraq’s “full cooperation” in the withdrawal from the buffer zone, U.N. officials said.

The United States has maintained about 4,000 troops from the Army’s 3rd Armored Division in the buffer zone. Most of them are concentrated near the Iraqi border community of Safwan, where thousands of Iraqi refugees have sought protection after a series of unsuccessful Muslim fundamentalist uprisings in southern Iraq.

Iraq has maintained a number of military troops near the port city of Umm Qasr, site of the new UNIKOM headquarters. It is also believed to have positioned tanks and troops south of Basra, according to sources familiar with reconnaissance reports from the region.

U.S. military planes have been airlifting 1,500 to 2,000 Iraqi refugees per day from an American Army-operated camp on the Iraqi-Kuwaiti border to a new camp in Saudi Arabia, which has offered the estimated 7,000 Iraqi refugees temporary asylum.

An additional 1,900 Iraqis with close religious or family ties to Iran are being flown to that country for refuge.

Greindl met with several senior Iraqi officials, including members of the ruling Revolutionary Command Council, and concluded negotiations for the Iraqi government to resume civil authority over communities within the demilitarized zone, including Safwan, Fayad said.

Although Iraqi military authorities will not be permitted within the zone, civilian police will be allowed to carry guns, he said.

Many citizens in Safwan have applauded the American troops’ presence, which included food and water distribution several times a week in the small border community and in the nearby refugee camp. But the town’s leadership has been opposed to the American occupation and has said the return of Iraqi control to the region will permit better law enforcement control.

“How would you think of a foreign army coming in and occupying your land?” Safwan Mayor Obeid Kathem asked.

Despite the wave of uprisings in southern Iraq seeking to undermine the regime of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, the mayor said, most in Safwan support the Baghdad government.

“He’s our president, and he’s a good man,” he said. “It’s just that we lost the war. We don’t even think of it as losing the war, actually, because we will pick ourselves up and maybe in 10 years everything will be all right again.”

Kurdish refugees are already trudging by the hundreds out of squalid camps along the Iraqi-Turkish border, and allied officers near the town of Zakhu said they hope the planned second refugee camp will persuade even more of them to come down.

Lt. Gen. John Shalikashvili, the commander of allied forces in northern Iraq, ordered his personnel to start building the second refugee camp today at Amadiyah, 30 miles east of Zakhu. It will accommodate refugees in the mountains of the far eastern frontier who cannot or do not want to travel as far west as Zakhu, said Capt. Ron Hahn, a spokesman for the general.

Most of the Kurds who fled toward Turkey after the collapse of their rebellion in northern Iraq in late March are still in mountain camps, but some of the larger camps such as Isikveren have already lost a quarter of their population, U.N. officials said.

Free-lance writer Hugh Pope in Zakhu, Iraq, contributed to this article.