Iraq is indefinitely detaining about 100 American diplomats and dependents who fled to Baghdad from the U.S. Embassy in Kuwait, officials in Washington said Friday.
So far, Iraq has not linked closing the embassy to permitting the Americans in Baghdad to leave Iraq, one U.S. official said. But others said their plight obviously was tied to the dispute over the embassy, which the Iraqis ordered closed Friday.Appeals through the night to the Iraqi government in Washington and in Baghdad failed to break the deadlock, the officials said, and one denounced the holdup as "contrary to explicit commitments."
Diplomats from a number of other governments who also fled to Baghdad from Kuwait City are stranded in the Iraqi capital, too, the official said.
"We have been working all night, here and in Baghdad, to pressure the Iraqi government to rescind the order," an official said, adding he did not expect a prompt resolution of the dispute.
The 100 Americans, including nearly 30 children, made the trip from Kuwait in a 33-car caravan, arriving in Baghdad after traveling nearly 20 hours.
Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had promised them safe passage even though 2,500 private U.S. citizens in Kuwait and more than 500 in Iraq are being refused permission to leave.
The fleeing Americans left behind about a dozen U.S. diplomats headed by Ambassador Nathaniel Howell to keep the U.S. Embassy in Kuwait City open despite an order by Saddam that it close by midnight (3 p.m. MDT).
Iraqi troops surrounded at least seven embassies in Kuwait City Friday morning - the British, French, Japanese, Norwegian, Swedish, Romanian and Hungarian.
The Japanese Foreign Ministry said Iraqi soldiers told the two Japanese diplomats remaining in Kuwait Friday that their diplomatic immunity had been revoked but made no attempt to remove them from the embassy.One of the Americans evacuated from the embassy was injured in a collision and was left behind to be hospitalized in Kuwait City. Her identity was not disclosed.
ABC News quoted unidentified Iraqi sources as reporting that Iraqi troops may prevent food from entering the buildings.
Concrete barriers and steel spikes are among the security measures guarding the U.S. Embassy complex on Arabian Gulf Boulevard.
"A few Marine guards aren't going to fight off the entire Iraqi army," a senior government official said Thursday in Washington.
On Thursday, Saddam appeared on television with British children and other captives, ruffling the hair of a small boy, smiling and joking - but making it plain their fate depends on how the Persian Gulf confrontation goes.
He told about 20 adults and children they were "guests" being held "to prevent the scourge of war."
State Department spokesman Richard Boucher denounced the TV display as "shameful theater," and Britain termed the 30-minute show "a repulsive charade." Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, among millions who watched Saddam toy with a small boy identified only as Stuart, declared: "This is quite sickening."
Pictures of Saddam with the children prompted banner headlines in British newspapers, which have dubbed the Iraqi leader "The Butcher of Baghdad." "A Caress of Evil" shrieked Today. "Clutch of the Devil" said the Daily Star.
About 3,000 Americans and 4,000 Britons are among the 21,000 Westerners stranded in Iraq and Kuwait.
One puzzling development Thursday was the report by a U.S. intelligence source that Saddam's elite Republican Guards, which led the attack into Kuwait, are being replaced on the front lines of his defenses by other troops.
But the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the Guards - numbering perhaps more than 50,000 according to NBC News - could still be used in an Iraqi attack on Saudi Arabia from Kuwait.
Fear of such an attack prompted the United States to mount the multinational Operation Desert Shield in the Saudi desert to protect the kingdom and its huge oil reserves.
America and Britain charged Thursday at the United Nations that Iraq was attempting to get around the Aug. 6 U.N. economic embargo by trying to ship oil worldwide and buy arms on the open market and black market.
U.S. Ambassador Thomas R. Pickering said he hoped venting the charges at an informal meeting of the Security Council sanctions committee will clear the way for the council to adopt a resolution authorizing military action to enforce the embargo against Iraq.
The Soviet Union has said it needs clear evidence of violations of the embargo against Iraq before approving world military enforcement of the sanctions.
In Moscow, Soviet Foreign Ministry spokesman Yuri Gremitskikh said Friday all Soviet diplomats had left Kuwait and returned to Moscow on a flight from Baghdad Thursday night.
"The situation made it impossible for them to do their work there," Gremitskikh said.
From Taif, Saudi Arabia, a reporter for The Wall Street Journal quoted officials of Kuwait's government-in-exile there as saying Iraqi troops have mined most of Kuwait's oil wells and have threatened to blow them up if Iraq's occupying forces are attacked.
In other developments:
- Iran said for the first time Friday that it will enforce the international trade embargo designed to punish Iraq for invading and annexing Kuwait, Tehran radio reported.
The broadcast quoted Iranian President Hashemi Rafsanjani as saying: "We respect, and will abide by the Security Council decision."
- About 70 ships from 11 nations are being deployed to the Persian Gulf or other Middle Eastern waters in response to the Iraq crisis, with more than half of them flying the American flag.
The U.S. Navy has 37 ships either in the gulf or en route, an unofficial count showed. Among them were four aircraft carrier battle groups and the battleship Wisconsin.
- Kuwait's government-in-exile said it is ready to bankroll most if not all of the $28 million a day cost of the massive American air, land and sea operation to counter the Iraqi occupation of the emirate.
Kuwait is estimated to have at least $100 billion in various offshore holdings purchased with oil profits. The capital has been frozen to prevent Iraq from seizing it, but analysts believe the emir could underwrite the entire U.S. military effort just with interest earned on his capital.
The emir of the conquered nation and his Cabinet are now based at a five-star hotel in the Saudi hill resort of Taif, from where they are organizing armed and passive resistance against Baghdad's 170,000-strong occupation force.
- Austrian President Kurt Waldheim, shunned for years by Western leaders because of his wartime past, arrived in Jordan Friday en route to Iraq for talks with Saddam about freeing foreign hostages.
Waldheim was to meet Jordan's King Hussein, then fly to Baghdad on Saturday, his office said. Waldheim would be the first Western leader to meet the Iraqi president face-to-face since Iraqi troops invaded Kuwait Aug. 2.