U.S. Plans to Take In 1,000 Iraqis Held in Saudi Camps : Refugees: Most of them fled after Saddam Hussein put down a Shiite rebellion after the Gulf War.

About 1,000 refugees from Iraq, mostly Shiite Muslims who have been detained in two desert camps in Saudi Arabia for a year or more, will be permanently resettled in the United States during the next two months, Bush Administration officials said Tuesday.

The refugees, expected to be followed by about 3,000 more Iraqi Shiites next year, will be coming to the United States against a backdrop of renewed Administration charges that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s systematic persecution of dissidents violates the conditions of the cease-fire that ended the Persian Gulf War.

Most of the refugees selected for resettlement in the United States, including some in Southern California, fled Iraq in the spring of 1991 when Hussein suppressed ethnic-based rebellions by Shiites in the southern part of the country and Kurds in the north.

At the time, Administration and United Nations officials expected that the refugees would be able to return home after a few months. Most of the Kurds were able to go home after the United States and its wartime allies established a sanctuary in northern Iraq that Iraqi military forces were prohibited from entering.

But no such zone was created for the Shiites. Instead, about 35,000 people were evacuated to two camps in Saudi Arabia. They have been stuck there ever since under harsh desert conditions.

An Administration official said the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees recently urged countries around the world to accept some of the refugees after concluding that they will be unable to return home safely in the foreseeable future.

“The United States has agreed to process for admission 1,000 refugees” in the current fiscal year, the official said. “We are hoping that most of the 1,000 will arrive before the end of the fiscal year on Sept. 30.”

The official said the United States expects to accept a maximum of 7,000 refugees from all areas of the Middle East and South Asia during the 12 months that start Oct. 1. Almost half are expected to be Iraqis.

The Saudi government has made it clear that it will not permit the refugees to settle in the kingdom. As long as they remain there, they will be confined to two camps, one for families and the other for single men.

There have been recurring reports of mistreatment of the refugees by Saudi authorities. But Administration officials say that conditions in the camps are generally good, especially compared to the plight of refugees in other parts of the world. However, officials acknowledge, the refugees are becoming increasingly restless at being confined to the closely guarded camps.

In the most serious incident that the United States and the United Nations have been able to confirm, several hundred refugees were returned to Iraq against their will late last year.

An Administration official said the Saudi government has acknowledged the incident and promised to make sure that nothing of the sort happens again.

Lavinia Limon, executive director of the International Institute of Los Angeles, an organization that assists refugees and other immigrants, said some of the Iraqis will be resettled in Southern California. She said three have already arrived and an undetermined number will follow.

“Most of the people we have interviewed have family here,” she said. “A lot of them speak English; they are mostly middle-class.”