U.S. Confirms 2 Americans Detained in Iraq : Persian Gulf: The men, workers for a private firm in Kuwait, were captured Monday in a border town.

Two Americans working in Kuwait have been held since Monday by Iraqi police after they crossed the border on their way to visit friends, U.N. officials said Friday.

At the White House, Press Secretary Mike McCurry said President Clinton had been briefed on the situation and the United States was “doing what we should be doing” to get the two men released.

David Johnson, a State Department spokesman, would not confirm reports that the Americans were being held in Baghdad.

The Americans drove to the U.N. observer mission, based in the Iraqi side of the divided border town of Umm al Qasr, and were turned away because they lacked permission to be there, said Salim Fahmawi, spokesman for the U.N. Iraq-Kuwait Observation Mission.

The men were apparently headed back to Kuwait when they were arrested by Iraqi police Monday night, Fahmawi said.

A U.N. diplomat in New York said the Americans were trying to visit friends in a Danish engineering unit housed near Umm al Qasr. They were driving a white jeep similar to those used by the United Nations and were about 25 yards inside Iraq when they were seized, the diplomat said on condition of anonymity.

Since the United States has no diplomatic relations with Iraq, Washington has asked the United Nations and Poland, which handles U.S. interests in Baghdad, to investigate, officials in Washington said.

The head of the U.N. force in Kuwait, Maj. Gen. Krishna Thapa, visited Baghdad on Tuesday to ask about the Americans, the U.N. official in New York said. The Iraqis neither confirmed nor denied knowledge of the arrests.

As of Friday, the United Nations had received no response to Thapa’s demand for the release of the Americans, the diplomat said.

McCurry said the two Americans are employees of a private U.S. company.

One of the men is David Daliberti of Jacksonville, Fla., his wife told the Florida Times-Union.

Daliberti, family members told the newspaper, was working in Kuwait for an American company that provides maintenance for Kuwaiti military aircraft.

The second man had not been identified.

U.N. officials have been in contact with Iraqi authorities “to determine the Americans’ whereabouts and to ensure their safety,” Fahmawi said. But he did not detail the Iraqis’ response.