Besieged Diplomats in Kuwait Keep a Stiff Upper Lip During Holdout : Occupation: Courage and loyalty are the hallmarks at the British Embassy and various foreign missions that have vowed to stay open.

By NICK B. WILLIAMS Jr

Oct. 9, 1990 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

BAGHDAD, Iraq — Every morning during the five weeks that he and three other diplomats were the last holdouts at the British Embassy in Kuwait, Donald MacAulay would check the Union Jack on the compound’s flagstaff.

“One wanted to see which way he breeze was coming from to determine where to set up for the day,” the bearded commercial attache explained Monday in Baghdad, detailing life under a blistering sun and Iraqi occupation.

Since Aug. 24, no one has been permitted to enter or leave the British compound or any other Western embassy in the overrun country. Diplomats could leave only to come to--and stay in--Baghdad.

Because of the absence of communications with Kuwait, the determined stand of foreign embassies to show the flag and carry out their duties there is a little-known story of the Persian Gulf crisis.

MacAulay and a second British diplomat, Brian McKeith, pulled out over the weekend at the orders of their government, leaving Ambassador Michael Weston and Consul Larry Banks to watch the flag and attend to the needs of the estimated 600 to 700 British citizens remaining in Kuwait.

The last two Italian diplomats closed the doors of their embassy in Kuwait on Saturday as shortages of food and water made continued resistance impossible. As in previous shutdowns, the Italian government declared its embassy still open in principle, defying Iraqi orders to transfer operations to Baghdad and abandon what Iraq says is now just another province.

The U.S. Embassy and more than 10 others are continuing to hold out.

“Life in the embassy was like camping in the desert,” MacAulay said. “It’s an old building, and hot. We lived on the veranda outside the ambassador’s office.” The air conditioning went out when the Iraqis cut off the electric power in the last week of August.

The first night of detention was a celebrated example of British pluck, as disclosed by the Foreign Office in London. Ambassador Weston broke out a bottle of Champagne, and the four men dined by candlelight.

After that, their story was lost to the outside world, but MacAulay said life changed abruptly.

“The second night, it was warm water by street light--the only illumination coming from outside the embassy windows,” he said.

The local staff--the cook and his wife--stayed on, but that was two more mouths for a limited amount of food and water. They left after the first week.

“After that, we all just did what had to be done,” MacAulay told a group of reporters. “We’re all rather gregarious fellows, and we got along fine. The ambassador fancies himself a bit of a cook, so he fixed the meals. He did some American-style brownies one night. Very good. On my last night there, we had lasagna.

“Larry Banks is a keen gardener, so he planted some vegetable seeds and cared for them. He took apart the piping under the sink so when we did the dishes, the water would fall through to a filthy pan he had found. Then he took the pan out to lovingly sprinkle his vegetables.

“I did my fair share of washing the dishes, and I suppose I became the embassy telephonist, answering incoming calls. We had wires running all over the grounds to various phones.”

But they were hardly four men on a desert island. Although they could not leave the compound, the local phones were working, and they kept in touch with the British community through a “warden” system. When information went out from the embassy or came in from the homes and apartments where British citizens were holed up to evade Iraqi authorities, the wardens were the key.

“It is sort of a pyramid system, with the embassy on top,” MacAulay explained. When the diplomats wanted to get information out, they would phone the wardens, and the wardens would pass the message on through their network of contacts. It was, and remains, a 24-hour, two-way communications net.

“We were always ready to answer a call,” MacAulay said. “Say there was an opportunity to leave Kuwait. A man and his wife might sit up half the night discussing the risks, then make their decision at 2 a.m. We had to be prepared to give them answers at any hour.”

Kuwait, he said, “is an absolute rumor factory; people have nothing to do but talk.”

The British Embassy is on Kuwait’s coastal road, the corniche, just across from Dasman Palace, home of the now-exiled Sabah family, the country’s rulers. The palace was the scene of the heaviest fighting during the Aug. 2 invasion.

The view from the embassy roof is limited, MacAulay said, but when he left, traffic seemed to be moving on the roads nearby.

Asked whether food supplies in the city were adequate, he replied, “What’s adequate?”

According to documented reports, stores and warehouses were stripped of supplies in the first weeks of the crisis. Many Baghdad shops are now filled with goods that came up from Kuwait.

MacAulay said most of the Britons still in Kuwait had stocked their homes with food on the first days and appeared to be all right for now.

Water is potentially a greater problem. City water comes from desalination plants on the gulf, and the plants need a great deal of power. If the power plants break down for lack of maintenance or other reasons, the water pipes will run dry. MacAulay said Iraqi engineers have recently arrived in Kuwait to maintain the generators.

The Britons, he said, are staying in their homes, “keeping their heads down, not putting themselves in a position to be picked up.”

Most of them are men, some unmarried and others left alone when their families were evacuated after Iraqi President Saddam Hussein agreed to let foreign women and children leave Kuwait and Iraq.

In September, a number of British men were swept up by Iraqi soldiers in Kuwait and taken to Baghdad, where they became “special guests” of the government--hostages against military attack.

MacAulay and McKeith, the other British diplomat who left Kuwait over the weekend, now have an indefinite status. But they are forbidden to leave Iraq.

“I’ve been doing a bit of consular work at the embassy,” MacAulay said, offering his card to reporters. “Call me any time.”