UN Prepares To Monitor Iraqi Test Sites

ROLF EKEUS, chairman of the UN special commission to eliminate Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, met yesterday with the Security Council to gain approval of a plan that would end a stand-off over weapons monitoring with Baghdad.

Mr. Ekeus negotiated the compromise plan with Iraqi officials during a five-day trip to Baghdad. Following the Council's acceptance, United Nations weapons inspectors will install monitoring cameras at two missile-testing sites south of Baghdad. But the equipment will not be used until the UN and Iraq work out technical details for long-term monitoring of Iraq's weapons programs.

Iraq's previous refusal to allow installation of the cameras brought UN threats of punitive action to enforce the Gulf war cease-fire agreement.

The Security Council on Wednesday maintained its three-year trade and oil embargoes against Iraq, saying that Baghdad still has not accepted the UN-demarcated frontier with Kuwait, returned all Gulf war detainees from Kuwait, and provided humane treatment of Iraqi Kurds and Shiites. Kuwaitis open doors again

Kuwait eased immigration rules yesterday to make it easier for expatriates to bring in relatives as a way of boosting the post-Gulf war economy, an Interior Ministry spokesman said.

The new rules reduce the fees expatriates have to pay for residence visas for dependent relatives. Since the Gulf war, Kuwait's population has fallen by 40 percent as a result of a new policy of cutting foreign labor. The law was also an attempt to make Kuwaitis a majority, but economists say non-Kuwaitis still outnumber Kuwaitis 55 to 45 percent.

Businessmen complain that the post-Gulf war curbs reduced consumer activity because many of the new expatriates are Asian bachelors who send their earnings home. They have replaced Palestinians who kept their families and financial assets in the country. Many Kuwaitis blame a wave of theft and what they call immoral crimes on foreign bachelors.