Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, March 18, 1995                   TAG: 9503210050
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: KUWAIT                                LENGTH: Medium

IRAQ HOLDS U.S. PAIR, U.N. SAYS

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 released.

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

The Americans, who were not officially identified, drove to the U.N. observer mission, based in the Iraqi side of the divided border town of Umm Qasr, and were turned away because they lacked permission to be there, said Salim Fahmawi, spokesman for the U.N. Iraq-Kuwait Observation Mission.

They apparently were 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 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.

Because 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 and guarantees of their safety, the diplomat said.

McCurry said the two Americans are employees of a private U.S. company, but he would not release further details or their identities, citing privacy laws.

Fahmawi said the two drove across the protective trench the Kuwaitis had dug along the 130-mile border near Umm Qasr, Iraq's only port on the Persian Gulf.

Part of the port was ceded to Kuwait three years ago, when the United Nations redrew the border after the 1991 Gulf War, in which a U.S.-led multinational coalition ended the Iraqis' seven-month occupation of Kuwait. The U.N. observers have their headquarters in the Iraqi part of Umm Qasr.

``They were stopped by U.N. personnel at Umm Qasr ... for lack of authorization to enter,'' Fahmawi said. As they apparently headed back toward Kuwait late Monday, ``they were apprehended by Iraqi police.''

U.N. officials have been in contact with Iraqi authorities ``to determine the Americans' whereabouts and to ensure their safety,'' he said. But he did not say what response there had been from the Iraqis.

The state-run Iraqi media has not reported the arrest at the border, which Baghdad recognized Nov. 10 under U.N. pressure.

Nor has there been any official word from the Baghdad regime, which has bitterly criticized Washington recently for pressing the U.N. Security Council to maintain the crippling trade sanctions imposed on Iraq after it invaded Kuwait in August 1990.

The situation in Iraq has been described by U.S. officials as unstable, especially in the north where Kurds have managed to attack government forces and capture Iraqi troops.

Secretary of State Warren Christopher returned Wednesday from a trip to the region in which he received from several Arab governments assurances of support for extending the U.N. sanctions.