ABDALI, Kuwait-Iraq border, October 19 (News Agencies) - Kuwait prepared on Saturday to receive national archives looted by Iraq during its occupation of the emirate but reminded Baghdad it was still awaiting the return of some 600 Kuwaitis missing since the 1991 Gulf War.

"Today they [UN officials] will finalize details with the other parties to be ready to start receiving" the archives on Sunday, Kuwaiti foreign ministry undersecretary Khaled al-Jarallah told Agence France-Presse (AFP).

"I don't think they will receive anything today," he said, adding that the documents would be returned through UN officials.

The handover is due to take place at the Abdali border point on the Kuwaiti side of a UN-monitored demilitarized zone along the Iraq-Kuwait frontier.

A convoy of five Iraqi trucks carrying the archives that set out from Baghdad Friday had reached Safwan near the border with Kuwait and was waiting for a UN green light to cross to the Kuwaiti side of the frontier, a UN source told AFP.

But "eight to 10 Iraqis" are already at one of the offices of the UN Iraq-Kuwait Observers Mission (UNIKOM), which monitors the demilitarized zone, finalizing details of the handover, the source said.

Also in the area was Richard Foran, the UN official in charge of the archives issue. Iraqi foreign ministry officials said Friday that each truck had a capacity of 20 tons but did not say what their total cargo was. They said the trucks contained "all of Kuwait's national archives."

Iraq has said it was returning the documents in line with an agreement reached under UN auspices and with the participation of the Arab League, and also in keeping with pledges Baghdad made at last March's Arab summit in Beirut.

Iraq and Kuwait reached a landmark agreement in Beirut, 11 years after a U.S.-led coalition ended Iraq's seven-month occupation of the emirate, with Baghdad pledging never again to invade its neighbor.

The compromise accord said Iraq's respect for Kuwait's sovereignty would prevent a recurrence of the 1990 invasion which sparked the Gulf War.

Kuwaiti Foreign Minister Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad al-Sabah, while describing the restoration of the archives as "important," said on Saturday that a more important issue was that of some 600 Kuwaitis missing since the Gulf conflict.

"Even though it [return of archives] is important, there is something more important to us, which is the issue of the POWs. Everyone in Kuwait is waiting for the POWs," Sheikh Sabah told reporters outside parliament, which reconvened for a new term on Saturday.

The decision to restore the archives was taken during the Beirut summit, the Kuwaiti foreign minister noted.

Kuwait maintains that 605 of its and other countries' nationals disappeared during the Iraqi occupation of the emirate, and claims they are still being held in Iraq.

Iraq has admitted taking prisoners but said it lost track of them during a Shiite Muslim uprising in southern Iraq following its retreat from Kuwait.