Leftover Guns--Another Threat in Tense Kuwait : Disorder: A government request to turn in weapons has meager results. Some fear terrorism or civil war.

The white-robed youth jauntily entered a police station, flipped aside his veil and handed over a rusty rifle wrapped in tinfoil.

He said he had bought it for about $450 during the Iraqi occupation, but it wasn’t much of a war trophy; the barrel was separated from the stock, and to fire it would be suicidal.

A former member of the Kuwaiti resistance took one look and snorted.

“These are children’s toys,” he said. “Anybody who surrenders his weapons is stupid. . . . Besides, Kuwait is not free.”

In the latest attempt to persuade its well-armed populace to surrender vast caches of weapons scavenged from the Kuwaiti, U.S. and Iraqi forces, the Kuwaiti government had declared Monday, the day the youth turned in his weapon, to be the last day of a gun amnesty. But so few citizens were complying that even before the amnesty expired, the government announced that the deadline will be extended until July 2.

“Nobody in this town is going to give up what they’ve got,” a Western diplomat said. The alternative--house-to-house searches by the Kuwaiti military--could prove even more problematic, he said.

In the tense postwar political climate, which includes a seething nationalities problem, continued vigilante violence and a government that has yet to earn the confidence of its people, the proliferation of arms is perhaps the most severe law-and-order problem facing the Kuwaiti government.

Many see the leftover materiel as an invitation to terrorism; some fear civil war.

Lebanon crops up frequently in conversations here, among opposition leaders, among Palestinians and even among Kuwaitis who are loyal to the ruling Sabah family.

“There will be another Lebanon here,” said a 33-year-old former resistance veteran, who once worked as an electrical engineer for McDonnell Douglas in Long Beach, Calif., and asked to be called Mohammed. “People are still very angry. Nothing is changing.”

A frustrated democracy activist agreed. “This is their last chance to communicate in a peaceful way,” said Issam Sagar, a banker, at an opposition meeting last month. “I’m sure there are people underground. They reach a point where there is no way to communicate with the government or the Sabahs anymore. . . . We don’t want to be another Lebanon. We don’t want different armies financed by different groups.”

But the Western diplomat, while warning that the violence of the Iraqi occupation has left its mark on what was a peaceful and law-abiding society, said the threat of civil war is exaggerated.

“You’re not going to find Kuwaitis going against Kuwaitis the way you saw Lebanese going against Lebanese,” he said. “This is not Lebanon.”

Nearly four months after liberation, gunfire continues to be heard in the streets. Two exchanges of shots were heard directly behind the U.S. Embassy about 9 a.m. Saturday.

“It was heavy gunfire,” said Robert Mahon, a Salt Lake City businessman who heard the shots and watched the ensuing police chase from his hotel balcony. “It wasn’t just a pop-pop-pop. It was bang-bang-bang.”

An embassy guard, who gave an identical account, said U.S. security officers were assured by the Kuwaiti police that the situation was under control, but they decided to escort the ambassador in through the front door just in case.

Despite a plea last month from Kuwait’s crown prince, Sheik Saad al Abdullah al Sabah, who noted that the order to surrender arms also covered machine guns, antitank guns and antiaircraft missiles, the results Monday were uninspiring.

At the Farwaniya police station, a half-filled storeroom showed the results of a month’s worth of surrendered and confiscated weapons: a few machine guns, including two M-16s, six French MAS automatic pistols, a small bag of hand grenades, one box of antiaircraft ammunition, a few rocket-propelled grenades and about 250 Brownings and other hunting rifles, one of World War II vintage.

Asked whether any non-Kuwaitis had surrendered their weapons, a police officer shrugged.

“Two Egyptians and one Syrian only,” he said.

Tourists can find far better pickings at Mugla Ridge, the so-called “Death Valley” north of Kuwait city where allied forces decimated the fleeing remnants of the Iraqi occupation force.

Anyone brave enough to pick a path through the mines can find amid the singed rubble a terrorist’s delight: a Soviet T-72 tank, still fully armed with 110-millimeter shells; hundreds of crates of Jordanian hand grenades, howitzer shells and high-explosive mortar bombs; .50-caliber heavy machine-gun rounds, and fuses and detonators that could be easily turned into homemade bombs.

In the burning oil fields south of the city, abandoned Iraqi bunkers are filled with ammunition, although some of it has already disappeared, oil workers said. An Iraqi antiaircraft gun, apparently undamaged, sits facing north, perfectly positioned to shoot anything landing at Kuwait International Airport.