U.N. Admits Problems in Jordan Relief Effort : Refugees: But it blames governments for slow response. The worst difficulties may be only temporary.

Faced with angry outcries, the United Nations on Thursday acknowledged shortcomings in the distribution of relief to tens of thousands of refugees stranded in Jordan, but a prominent U.S. relief official predicted that the worst problems will be overcome in a couple of weeks.

A good deal of confusion reigned in the home offices of government and private relief agencies as news dispatches and television reports described a mass of destitute humanity on the Jordan border struggling to survive while waiting for transportation home after fleeing from Iraq and Kuwait.

Most specialists agree that the problem is starkly different from almost all other refugee problems, for it is a temporary one that could be eased if enough ships and planes arrive to take the stranded refugees back to their own countries.

“It’s a glut problem,” said Lawrence Pezzullo, executive director of Catholic Relief Services. “These people are destitute and confused, and their governments are befuddled. It’s not a refugee problem like those of Afghanistan and Ethiopia.

“It’s a short-term need. But, until it’s resolved in about two weeks, you will see these ugly stories about people dying of thirst and of not enough medical supplies. I can’t see why it should take longer than two weeks.”

In Geneva, Fabrizio Gentilioni, a senior official of the U.N. Disaster Relief Organization, which is coordinating relief efforts, acknowledged difficulties in the operation but put the blame on the failure of governments to respond to appeals for help. “International help is not as forthcoming as we would have hoped,” said Gentilioni.

But in Washington, the State Department disputed this view. An official said $151.1 million worth of relief has been provided or promised so far. “It’s the fastest international response that I have seen to a situation like this,” a State Department official said.

The difficulties of the relief operation were underscored Tuesday when Jordan’s Crown Prince Hassan told a news conference: “As the downtrodden of the Earth, the plight of these people . . . has evoked only the faintest of responses from the world community and from a world press more interested in war scenarios than in humanitarian relief.”

In Washington, however, those remarks were seen not as a true assessment of the relief operation but as a reflection of the Jordanian government’s fury and frustration over a terrible situation.

Since Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait on Aug. 2, almost half a million foreign workers and their families have fled into Jordan through Iraq; most of them had been working in Kuwait.

The vast majority are Egyptians, who have been able to reach their country fairly easily, and Palestinians with Jordanian passports. But at least 100,000 are Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, Indians, Filipinos and other Asians who must wait for transport. And, even as relief agencies and governments try to provide it, more refugees are coming across the border.

But there has been difficulty in feeding and caring for these refugees.

“We have been told by our workers in Jordan,” said Chris George, assistant director of the Save the Children Fund, “that the relief effort has not been going well, that the United Nations is only now getting organized. People are panicking. At first, it was not a problem of the quantity of food but of the distribution. Now, there is a problem of quantity.”

The sheer size of the problem may have overwhelmed U.N. officials. “We haven’t done anything on such a massive scale since Ethiopia,” said U.N. official Gentilioni. He was referring to the relief operation in Ethiopia in 1984 and 1985 when at least 1 million people died in drought and civil war.

A State Department official said the U.S. government has sent 25,000 tons of rice and 5,000 tons of vegetable oil to Jordan. Although these supplies will not arrive until about Oct. 1, the official said, the State Department believes that Jordan has enough food to care for the refugees until then.

The United States has also sent 18,000 food-ration packs, nearly 15,000 water jugs and 1,000 tents to the relief camps. In addition, the official said, Washington has granted $250,000 to the Jordanian Red Crescent organization and $350,000 to the International Committee of the Red Cross.

The largest donation from a single country was $61 million, provided by Saudi Arabia for transporting refugees to Egypt and other parts of Africa.

Also on Thursday, a Panamanian-registered cargo vessel carrying 800 Indian refugees from Kuwait arrived in Dubai, shipping sources said. They said it was the first ship to depart Kuwait with refugees since the invasion.

United Nations officials have estimated that, as refugees leave Jordan and new refugees take their places, the population of the relief camps will remain at about 120,000 for the next three months.

There had been some speculation that some poor Asian countries are reluctant to fly or ship their nationals home because the earnings they sent to their families every month were significant sources of foreign exchange. The governments, according to this theory, are procrastinating in hopes that the crisis will dissipate and that their citizens can go back to work.

But Catholic Relief’s Pezzullo said: “I think they’re just overwhelmed. I don’t think there’s any reluctance.”

He said a Catholic Relief team is en route to Jordan to assess what additional help should be sent.