KURDISH REFUGEES TAKEN TO TURKEY.

Byline: Douglas Jehl The New York Times

Even as they perched among their suitcases on the way to the Turkish border, the families aboard Bus No. 8 remained reluctant to tell their last names.

Among Iraqi Kurds, these were the lucky ones, employees of American government agencies who began heading Sunday toward resettlement in the United States. But everyone on the bus had worked in the northern city of Irbil, which Kurdish guerrillas backed by Iraqi tanks seized from a rival faction 15 days ago, and none was yet ready to believe that freedom lay ahead.

Not until their convoy reached a one-lane bridge that led across the Khabur River and toward the relative safety of a Turkish military camp did the shadow cast by the Iraqi government of President Saddam Hussein finally appear to recede.

``Basim Yousef Dohoka,'' spelled out a man who until then would identify himself only as Basim. ``America gave us a promise, and we trusted them. They have been taking good care of us.''

In fact, as the first of the more than 2,000 Kurds to whom the United States has promised refuge left Iraqi soil, American officials were nowhere in sight. They were said to be waiting near a Turkish tank on the far side of the bridge to welcome the local administrators, clerks, translators, and drivers left behind when U.S. personnel fled from northern Iraq on Aug. 31.

But an American diplomat in the reception team told reporters that the United States, with Turkey's help, would move swiftly to transport the refugees to their new American homes. He said the United States was making good on an obligation to protect its own.

``We believe there is a potential threat to these people,'' said the diplomat, Francis J. Ricciadone, deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Turkey. ``The potential threat is Saddam Hussein.''

As the refugees set out on Sunday toward an uncertain future, many looked numb. To leave northern Iraq, they had to climb out of their buses and walk across the 100-yard bridge, tugging children, lugging bags, and clutching scrawled names and phone numbers that were all they knew of the United States.

But aboard Bus No. 8, whose passengers had gathered anxiously in a dirt lot outside the city of Dohuk, the mood gradually began to lift as the convoy whisked its way without incident through checkpoints controlled by the Kurdish faction that aligned itself with the army of Saddam.

With a fear shared by the United States, most of those aboard were convinced that as employees of the American government, they would be hunted down if the Iraqi leader used his alliance with the Kurdistan Democratic Party to extend control over northern Iraq, which Western allies had declared a protected region for Iraqi Kurds after the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

``To live is more important than anything else,'' said Dohoka, who like everyone aboard left his house, his furniture and nearly everything else behind. ``My son is 6, and he started school this year. God willing, he'll start school again in the United States.''

The United States is evacuating only current employees of its agencies and relief organizations under contract to them, angering other Iraqi Kurds who worked for American agencies in the past and believe that they are equally at risk. But no one made any attempt to disrupt today's operation, which was organized largely by the Kurds themselves.

All of the 449 men, women and children in the group that was the first across the border Sunday afternoon had traveled from the Iraqi town of Dohuk, an hour's drive to the south.

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PHOTO Fearing for their lives because they worked for U.S.agencies in northern Iraq, Kurdish refugees cross the border Sunday into Turkey.

Associated Press