Iraq Still in Part of Kuwait

ABDALY, Kuwait--More than a month after President Bush declared Kuwait liberated, Iraqi forces still control a small pocket of the emirate's territory, a Kuwaiti tank commander said yesterday.

About 300 Iraqi soldiers remain inside Kuwait, just south of the Iraqi port of Um Qasr, Capt. Nasser Al-Duwaila said. He badly wants to get them out.

"This is our land," said Al-Duwaila, the acting commander of Kuwait's 7th Armored Battalion. "Kuwait is not free if there is one Iraqi soldier on our land."

Al-Duwaila said there were no Kuwaiti officers in authority when allied units first moved into the area, apparently producing brief uncertainty about the border's location.

"This is a big mistake here," Al-Duwaila recalled telling allied officers when he reached the area later. "They said, 'No, there's a cease-fire.'"

Bush called off the pursuit of Iraqi forces on February 28, declaring that "Kuwait is liberated, Iraq's army is defeated."

The area in question covers about two square miles directly south of Um Qasr, and was attacked by Iraq once before, in 1973, Al-Duwaila said. He said the Iraqis occupy scattered Kuwaiti military facilities, including a barracks and an observation post.

They have built new roads "so they can say to the world, 'there are our roads, this is our area," he said. "Their plan is to cut up our land piece by piece."

The matter has been brought to the attention of allied headquarters in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

One of the senior U.S. Army commanders along the border area, Col. Bill Nash of the 3rd Armored Division's First Brigade, said he knew of the Kuwaiti complaints but expressed no interest in getting involved.

"Our task is to defend the DML [the demarcation line established at the end of hostilities], not the international boundary," he said. "I'm where I'm supposed to be, and nobody has intruded into my space."

Nash, of Hayden, Ariz., said there was no indication of significant Iraqi military movements in the region as a formal cease-fire becomes increasingly likely. "There's no military threat to my command," he said.

Al-Duwaila said he was confident that the U.S. commander, Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf, would eventually ensure that Kuwait's long-disputed borders with Iraq were protected.

"We are a small country and we can't afford to lose any piece of our land," he told reporters visiting his command post. "We want it back immediately."

Al-Duwaila said he told allied officers at a weekend meeting that they should oust the Iraqis themselves, or allow Kuwaiti troops to reclaim the area, or let Kuwaiti forces occupy a similar-size portion of Iraq until a formal cease-fire is signed.

"Let me push them north," Al-Duwaila said. "I will not shoot anyone. I'll just tell them, 'Please leave my land.'"