44 U.N. Inspectors Freed by Iraq With Secret Nuclear Documents

A team of 44 United Nations inspectors detained by Iraq were freed early today and allowed to remove documents that they believe will yield information on the country's secret nuclear weapons program.

The inspectors, who had spent four nights in a bus and several cars after they were surrounded by Iraqi guards in a parking lot, returned to their hotel shortly before 6 A.M. Baghdad time.

Iraq yielded and freed the inspectors after once again testing the Security Council's will to enforce its plan to destroy Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. The Council had held open a vague threat of renewed military action if Baghdad refused to let the inspectors leave with the files.

David Kay, who led the team of international inspectors, announced at 1 A.M. Baghdad time that an agreement had been reached with the Iraqi authorities. providing for the nuclear experts to return to their hotel with all the documents they seized and videotapes they made in a surprise search of the Iraqi Atomic Energy Commission office this week.

The agreement calls for the team to give Iraq a complete inventory of the documents and tapes within 24 hours.

'Siege Is Officially Over'

Although the entrance to the parking lot was unblocked at 1 A.M., the inspectors spent the remainder of the night there, setting out for the hotel at dawn. Work on compiling the inventory was to begin later in the morning at the hotel in the presence of Iraqi officials.

"The siege is officially over as of seven minutes ago, when Iraqi soldiers started pulling back," Mr. Kay told Cable News Network earlier in his announcement by satellite phone. "The agreement reached is everything we came for. We have full control over the documents, all of the videotapes."

The dispute with the Iraqi authorities began on Monday, when the inspectors were expelled from the building as they were removing documents related to the country's nuclear plans and were detained for 12 hours. The team succeeded in obtaining what were described as plans showing Iraq was seeking to design components for a nuclear weapon. Iraqi Nuclear Personnel Files

The next day the inspectors were again seized and detained while removing the personnel files of scientists and other people working on the Iraqi nuclear program and documents dealing with purchases of foreign equipment and material.

The United Nations wants to examine the personnel records as part of its effort to build a picture of how Iraq's nuclear program is organized, an endeavor that may in turn lead the inspectors to undiscovered plants.

Ambassador Rolf Ekeus, head of the special commission charged with destroying Iraq's nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, said Friday night that he believed Iraq's plans to acquire highly enriched uranium have been curtailed by allied bombing and his own inspections. Baghdad Assails U.S.

But he pointed out that many Iraqis were still employed by their country's Atomic Energy Commission and said the commission must examine the personnel files to find out what they were doing.

Iraq's Foreign Minister, Ahmed Hussein, made no reference to the imminent decision to let the inspectors go when he addressed the United Nations General Assembly only minutes before Iraq withdrew its guards from around the parking lot.

Instead he devoted his address to castigating the United States for its role in the Persian Gulf war and its efforts to keep the Security Council's trade embargo against Iraq in force.

The agreement to free the inspectors was reached two days after Iraq wrote to the Security Council indicating that the team might be allowed to leave if the United Nations experts promised to catalogue all the material they were removing and give a copy to Iraqi officials. Completion of Inventory

The letter was delivered after the Security Council issued a strongly worded statement demanding that Baghdad free the inspectors. The team, from the International Atomic Energy Agency, based in Vienna, is charged with seeking out and destroying Iraq's covert nuclear weapons program.

Under the agreement subsequently worked out with the United Nations, Iraq will get a list of all files copied or removed as well as copies of videotapes the team has made. Photographic film of documents will be taken to Bahrain for development, withcopies sent back to Baghdad.

Mr. Kay said his team had already listed many of the files it removed from the building housing Atomic Energy Commission records and that it should have no difficulty meeting the deadline.

On Friday, Secretary of State James A. Baker 3d and the Foreign Ministers of the four other permanent Security Council members -- Britain, China, France and the Soviet Union -- issued another statement condemning what they termed "the pattern of persistent Iraqi noncompliance" with the Security Council's Gulf war cease-fire terms as well as the detention of the inspectors. Use of German Copters

In a further hopeful sign, Iraq also sent another letter to the United Nations Friday night dealing with its continuing standoff with the Council over the use of helicopters by the inspectors.

Ambassador Ekeus called it "a positive step" that left him "much more optimistic" an agreement could be reached on the use of helicopters. But he said he still had not finished examining the text.

Earlier this week, the special commission appointed to find and destroy arms of mass destruction thought it had Iraq's permission to start using the helicopters that are on loan from Germany and are awaiting permission to fly to Baghdad from Turkey.

But on Thursday, Iraq put that into question again when it sent a new letter saying Ambassador Ekeus should fly immediately to Baghdad to discuss conditions for the helicopter flights. The Council ignored that letter.

The United States, Britain and France had signaled that they were ready for another military confrontation with Iraq by making preparations to send warplanes back into the country to escort United Nations helicopters on their inspection trips if Iraq tried to prevent their use.

On Friday, Ambassador Ekeus postponed the start of the aerial inspections, originally planned for Sunday, saying he could not bring in the helicopters until Iraq had given permission for them to fly or while the nuclear team was still being detained.

The special commission now hopes to bring the helicopters into Iraq next Tuesday and begin aerial inspections shortly afterward.

Helicopters, officials say, will allow the inspectors to cover more ground and to spot Scud missile-launching sites and other banned installations more easily as they fly over the country.

During their four-day ordeal in the parking lot, the inspectors spoke regularly with United Nations officials on a portable telephone system. All calls relating to operational orders or the details of material they have found were scrambled.