Foodstuffs, Other Goods Flow Into Iraq at Jordanian Border : U.N. sanctions: Truckers are evasive about their cargos. The crossing also is a primary exit point for foreigners fleeing Kuwait.

This remote desert border crossing, where the slightest breeze whips up clouds of dust, is Iraq’s only two-way door on the world.

Here it is clearly evident that Jordan has refused to apply the U.N. sanctions against Iraq. On Friday, trucks carrying wheat, rice, cotton, sheet metal and other goods were lined up here waiting to cross over into Iraq.

But the most notable activity involved foreigners fleeing Kuwait as a result of the Iraqi invasion. While fear and desperation build among foreigners living in the occupied emirate, more and more are making the long, difficult overland trip and heading for home. About 16,000 came out Friday.

Home for most of them is Egypt. Others are bound for Jordan, Lebanon, Sudan, Syria, India, Pakistan.

No Americans or other Westerners crossed Friday, and this alarmed U.S. and British officials. Iraq has indicated that it will soon cut off altogether the departure of foreigners from Iraq and Kuwait.

To get here, the refugees must cross a stretch of terrain that looks almost lunar: gray rocks the size of pillows from horizon to horizon, the monotony broken only by a pair of medieval castles and an army post. The trip takes 3 1/2 hours.

Many of the trucks hurtling along the two-lane road have set out from Aqaba, Jordan’s port on an arm of the Red Sea. Truck drivers awaiting clearance at the fenced crossing eyed reporters suspiciously when asked about their cargo.

“This is wheat, from Canada,” barked one driver, Youssef Talleh.

He expressed admiration for Iraq’s President Saddam Hussein and for the invasion of Kuwait.

“We would rather eat dirt to help Saddam Hussein than to eat honey from California,” Talleh said.

Another trucker, whose cargo was rice, said he had been forbidden to talk. A third joked that his cargo was made up of chemicals, hinting that it was weaponry. He then explained that he meant insecticide, as the markings on his truck indicated.

It is not just here that Jordan has not complied with the U.N. sanctions. An Iraqi jet arrived in Amman late Thursday, making the Jordanian capital the only city in the world open to Iraqi aircraft.

Although bags of Iraqi cement were crossing into Jordan through Ruweished, it was the flight of human beings that occupied the frontier officials. Refugees wandered from office to office clutching passports and canvas bags containing their possessions.

There were few women among them, and they huddled in the sparse shade of bank and insurance huts trying to cool off. The temperature was 100 degrees in the shade, when there was shade.

Buses were in short supply, and this led to an occasional fistfight.

“Let me on!” an Egyptian laborer shouted at a driver who was trying to close the door of his crowded bus. “My bag has already been stowed.”

“No more, it’s prohibited,” the driver answered.

“But what about my luggage?”

“All right, come on.”

Another man tried the same argument, and the driver slammed the door on him.

The refugees uniformly described Kuwait city as a place in the grip of fear, a place that has lost all vitality since the Iraqi troops moved in and took over.

In Ruweished, there was no talk of Arab unity and Arab grandeur, the sort of thing heard from frustrated Arab nationalists in Amman. Here, one hears only sad stories of personal disaster, of life savings disintegrating because of the devalued currency, of homes looted, of television sets and appliances seized by Iraqi customs officials from people fleeing into Jordan.

A Lebanese merchant escaped with his two children in an eight-car convoy with friends and arrived in Ruweished on Friday morning. He said there had been no difficulty leaving Kuwait, but a long delay at Iraqi roadblocks just short of the border. Thousands of cars are being held up there in the sweltering heat, he said.

“There is no place to sleep,” he went on. “Imagine, in this heat, pregnant women and children.”

He said he abandoned his four-bedroom flat after learning that his place of business had been looted, adding, “Let me just say that my business is not there any more.”

He said he was able to bring out 400 dinars in Kuwaiti currency, which two weeks ago was the equivalent of $1,400. Now its value is $140, if anyone will take it. He also had $100 in U.S. currency, which he said he will use to buy gasoline for the rest of his journey to Beirut.

“I cannot withdraw my British pounds,” he said, and there is 35,000 Kuwaiti dinars that used to be worth a lot in the bank there. You have to ask yourself, do you want to wait for your money or do you want to save your life? We are not cowards, but when the children begin to ask when are we going to leave, it is hard to stay on.”

A young Palestinian who said his name was Daoud told reporters that Kuwaiti nationals have begun to resent the large Palestinian population in the city--there are about 300,000 of them--because the Palestinians have sided with Iraq.

“I myself was against the invasion,” he said. “But Kuwaitis now believe that we were all for it. In the future, there will be some trouble between us.”

Daoud, who said he was going to Canada to study, said there had been looting and that the Iraqi authorities had executed at least one of their officers as an example of what happens to looters.

The danger is mainly from poor Iraqis who have flooded into Kuwait to seize consumer goods that were beyond their reach at home, he said.

Hassan abu Abbas, an Egyptian carpenter, said of the Kuwaiti capital: “It is a city of ghosts. There is no work for us now. I saw the soldiers steal televisions and loot gold shops. We cannot get paid, even in dinars. Our boss has disappeared.”

He said he and his friends had arrived by bus and were pooling their money for the $12 bus fare to Aqaba. He said they are hoping that there would be enough for the ferry to their homeland.

A bus arrived in a cloud of dust, and the driver called out a series of names. The carpenter and his friends pushed each other through the door.