Hussein Birthplace Still Firm on Kuwait : Iraq: The issue of the neighboring state remains in forefront of thinking.

TIKRIT, Iraq — Ghanim Mustafa al Sheik, dean of Tikrit University’s College of Medicine, leaned forward Saturday and delivered his view of the demand that led to war.

“I think the Kuwait issue is as it was,” he said. “The relationship is still on our minds. . . . Kuwait is part of Iraq. I believe so.”

Not a surprising opinion in this city of 56,000 about 100 miles north of Baghdad. Tikrit is the Sunni Muslim Sparta of a combative nation. It is the hometown of President Saddam Hussein.

To most Iraqis, the city has become a symbol of privilege in the 12 years of Hussein’s rule. Tikritis, they say, have benefited from the relationship. Hussein’s clansmen have risen to high position in the government and the military. His cousins run the ministries of Defense and Interior, the instruments of repressive rule here.

The citizens of Baghdad say a haughty air comes with birth in Tikrit.

Maybe. But the town itself is not the sparkling paradise that many suggest. On this hot, breezy day of late spring, Tikrit looked like any middling town in the flat, desert country of the Middle East.

Most homes are humble, one-story, cement-brick structures. People on the streets dress plainly, most women wearing black robes. This is farming country, with some light industry--textiles, foodstuffs and cooking oil.

But there are touches of privilege and reminders of the presidential relationship. Approaching the city from Baghdad, motorists encounter a long line of modern street lights. And, in Tikrit, electric power was restored a month ago. The phones work in many areas.

In comparison, Baghdad is still subject to blackouts and the phone lines are dead.

From a distance--foreign journalists were turned back Saturday at a military checkpoint--the president’s birthplace, the village of Al Ojah outside Tikrit, appeared serene beside the blue waters of the Tigris River.

The university is a mark of Tikrit’s special status. One of 11 in Iraq, it was established three years ago with faculties in medicine, engineering and women’s education. Few of the others are in cities as small as Tikrit.

President Awni Shaaban, a native Tikriti with a master’s from UCLA and a Ph.D from Texas A&M;, said the city and the university did not escape the flames of war. The 1,000 students were sent home Jan. 17, with the outbreak of the allied air assaults on Iraq. They did not return until April 20.

“The war affected the whole life of the country,” he said. “We couldn’t continue. The city was bombarded many times.”

Shaaban said the curriculum was cut back to finish the school year. Eliminated were what he called “easy classes,” like sports and national culture, a political seminar on Iraqi history and world politics.

The main damage, Shaaban and other university officials said, was the allied blockade which stopped the flow of imported classroom supplies. “We know where they are,” said Mustafa al Sheik, the medical school dean. “Some of our equipment is in Holland. They got it as far as the Suez Canal, and it was turned back.”

These days, the students have more on their minds than anatomy studies, however. The university authorities, anticipating new currents in the student body, have established an Iraqi version of Beijing’s one-time Democracy Wall for political comment. But this is Tikrit, and there have been no revolutionary comments scrawled here.

Asked whether any criticism of the city’s native son had appeared, Hanan Mohammed Ali, a 19-year-old student from Mosul, said:

“No. We love him very much. He is the best we have. There is no one who can replace him.”

And the invasion of Kuwait that brought destruction to Iraq, including air raids on Tikrit that reportedly injured hundreds of people?

“Every leader has a small mistake,” she said. “It’s one mistake.”