Kuwait Government

On Monday, as the polls were about to close at Al Hassan Ibn al Haitham High School, Khalid Adwa, a 32-year-old firebrand Islamic priest, strode out to the school's courtyard. Within seconds, scores of voters and campaign workers left their posts. They fell in behind the imam, dropped to their knees and joined the charismatic clergyman in evening prayers.

Arab heads of state postponed an emergency summit Thursday after the Iraqi delegation balked at meeting with Kuwait's deposed emir while the region's top political leaders worked in advance, trying to negotiate an end to Iraq's occupation of the small Persian Gulf emirate.

Kuwaitis vote today for a new assembly portrayed by the government as necessary for the future of democracy in the Persian Gulf state but condemned by opposition activists as unconstitutional. A total of 348 candidates are running for the 50 seats to be chosen by Kuwait's 62,000-strong, all-male electorate. The emir, Sheik Jabbar al Ahmed al Sabah, will appoint 25 members of the 75-seat house.

The handwriting of the smuggled letter was barely legible, the undisciplined scrawl of a teen-ager. But there was nothing childish in the words, a pledge of determination for the freedom that Kuwaiti opposition leaders say will transform their nation from a feudal sheikdom into a real democracy. "You can be proud," the 16-year-old wrote to his parents from the underground, within the resistance movement in Iraqi-occupied Kuwait. "I am a man now and I will never be driven out.

Once Iraqi forces are pushed out of the country, the restored Kuwaiti government plans to impose martial law for at least three months and perhaps as long as a year, according to detailed plans drawn up by the U.S. Army to guide American forces assisting Kuwaiti officials.

Opposition leaders balked Monday at signing on to a new interim government in Kuwait, complaining that the ruling emir did not commit to a speedy restoration of the dissolved national Parliament.

Kuwait's National Council opened Tuesday in what government officials hailed as the first step toward democracy, but the opposition criticized it as a fig leaf concealing the Sabah dynasty's absolute rule. "I think it's a good start. It's a legitimate thing when you have 50 members elected by the people . . . and it will serve to bring up a loud debate inside Kuwait," said Sheik Nasser al Sabah al Ahmed al Sabah, a leading member of the emirate's ruling family.

The government of Kuwait plans to issue new identity cards to residents and re-register its entire population to weed out illegal aliens and reduce the number of foreigners, Cabinet officials and diplomats said Friday. Planning Minister Salman Abdul-Razek Mutawa said new cards will be issued to all who held one Aug. 1, the eve of the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, including those who were abroad at the time or fled during the seven-month Iraqi occupation.