GIs Begin Building Processing Center to Dispatch Iraqi Refugees to Saudi Arabia : War’s aftermath: The offer of asylum eases border tension and is applauded by the U.N.

U.S. Army forces began building a processing center here Friday to dispatch the first of an estimated 8,000 Iraqi refugees to Saudi Arabia, which has agreed to grant them asylum in a large new camp on the Saudi-Iraqi border.

The first 500 refugees are scheduled to leave southern Iraq on Sunday. This week, Iran also began accepting the first of about 2,000 Iraqi refugees with family or religious ties to Iran.

The new developments appear to resolve the worst of a growing dilemma on Kuwait’s border with Iraq, where about 20,000 refugees--mostly Shiite Muslims--have sought protection from Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s forces after a series of unsuccessful civil uprisings in southern Iraq.

Kuwait’s refusal to take in the Iraqis prompted fears of reprisals against the refugees by Iraqi police when U.S. forces withdraw from the region over the next two weeks and are replaced by unarmed U.N. observers.

“It’s really a very good gesture on the part of the Saudi government because it means a group of people who are in fear of their lives will find asylum, will find protection,” said Mike Menning, a spokesman for the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. “From our viewpoint, the problem is solved.”

Saudi Prince Khalid ibn Sultan, commander of Arab forces in the Gulf, said this week that the kingdom plans a major expansion at a prisoner of war camp at Rafha, 190 miles west of Kuwait in the Saudi desert near the Iraqi border. U.N. officials said the $30-million expansion will allow the facility to house up to 50,000 Iraqi refugees and prisoners of war who do not wish to return to Iraq.

In Safwan, where families in makeshift tents have been battling 100-degree-plus temperatures and whistling dust storms for weeks, the news was met with cautious enthusiasm by refugees. They are eager to flee Iraq but uncertain about what is likely to be a long-term residence in another refugee camp.

“I neither want to go to Saudi Arabia or to Iran. I don’t want to exchange one refugee camp for another. I just want to get out of here,” said Mustafa Jaffer, a former Kuwait city advertising agency worker.

But Ali, a 25-year-old Baghdad man who was sweating and lugging a large water container across the hot sand of the camp, shrugged and smiled. “This is the life! I’m very happy to move from this camp because we find it very difficult here, not far from the Iraqi killers. Any country in the world is better than Iraq.”

A tall, bearded man, wearing a white cloak across his face to shelter it from the swirling dust, predicted that moving the refugees to Saudi Arabia will remove the immediate threat of danger but will not solve the problem of thousands of Iraqi citizens unable to return to their homes.

“I think you are looking for the truth. The truth is not in this camp--the truth is inside Iraq,” said the man, an English literature student. He explained:

“In this camp you find doctors, engineers, teachers. But what is the benefit of these certificates in the camp? Each man has his gift, and Saddam will kill his gift without justification. What is the answer for this? Here we wait, wait--it is like we wait for Godot, but where is Godot? And who is Godot? We don’t know him here.”

U.N. officials said Iraqis who elect to seek asylum in Saudi Arabia will be moved to the new camp at the rate of about 500 per day on U.S. military aircraft beginning Sunday. Saudi Arabia is already housing about 13,000 Iraqi refugees in a camp at an undisclosed site about 3 miles north of the Saudi-Iraqi border.

Up to 16,000 Iraqi prisoners of war have asked to remain in Saudi Arabia and will also be housed at the Rafha facility.

U.N. officials said there are no plans to resettle the refugees permanently in Saudi Arabia. However, it is clear that their stay in the kingdom could be protracted because most fear returning to Iraq while Hussein remains in power.

Iran, which has agreed to provide asylum for about 2,000 Iraqis--both Shiite Muslim religious leaders and those who have family members in Iran--began moving the first 380 Thursday from southern Iraq via Kuwait’s international airport.

Humanitarian workers had expressed frustration at Kuwait’s refusal to take in the Iraqi refugees. But many Western officials were sympathetic, arguing that Kuwait is not prepared to accept the security problems associated with thousands of refugees.

“The Saudis have a lot of territory,” said one diplomat. “Unlike Kuwait, they have an intact security force which could provide policing operations around the camp, and they would not be destabilized by 10,000 refugees put in a place where they could take care of them.”

Prince Khalid, in a statement broadcast on Riyadh Radio, said the decision to house the refugees at Rafha “demonstrates the kingdom’s humanitarian role, in line with the teachings of Islam.”

He told journalists that the camp should be completed in the next two weeks and will contain health and security facilities with a constant supply of cool water.

The Saudi government’s asylum offer applies only to Iraqi refugees. It does not include third-country nationals and thousands of Kuwaitis who do not hold full nationality, known as bedoons , who have not been readmitted to Kuwait following the Persian Gulf War.

Those people will probably remain at Safwan for some time, U.N. and other officials said. But it is not believed they are under any immediate threat from the return of Iraqi civil control to the demilitarized zone along the Iraqi-Kuwaiti border. It is likely that U.S. military officials, and later U.N. workers, will be able to continue providing food and water to those remaining in Safwan, said Menning of the U.N. agency.

International aid agencies are attempting to persuade Kuwait to readmit the bedoons under a provision of the Geneva Conventions that requires readmission of previous residents after a war. But Kuwait maintains that many of the bedoons are not entitled to Kuwaiti residence.