Jordan Reporting Fewer Asian Refugees : Exodus: But another wave fleeing Iraq is reported massing across the border. New camps and reception centers are being opened.

The Jordanian government Wednesday reported a sharp drop in the number of Asian refugees from Kuwait awaiting repatriation, but wrangling continued between the government and international relief organizations amid warnings of another huge wave of refugees massing in Iraq.

Updating numbers that have been as inconstant as shifting desert sands since the Asian workers began arriving after Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait on Aug. 2, the government reported that there are 46,120 Asians in Jordan awaiting repatriation.

Over the weekend, officials had spoken of three times that number, and some relief workers took the new figures with a grain of salt. The largest and most desolate camp, in the no-man’s-land between the Jordanian border post of Ruweished and the Iraqi border, was officially said to house 6,670 Asians, but visitors to the camp Wednesday said there seemed several times that number.

Salameh Hammad, director of a Jordanian government task force overseeing the relief effort, said the camp, where some refugees have endured for up to two weeks, will be closed today and replaced with a reception center where new arrivals will be registered and moved within hours to other centers according to nationality. Bangladeshis, who formed the core of unskilled labor in Kuwait, are a majority among the refugees, followed by Indians, Sri Lankans, Pakistanis, Filipinos and Thais.

On Wednesday night, officials began moving refugees from border camps to two new centers at Azraq, east of Amman. The new camps are well-organized, with piped water and the promise of electricity, but at nightfall there were still no mattresses for tents.

United Nations sources said the Jordanian government had reluctantly agreed to allow cooking facilities at one of the two new camps but had refused them at the other, fearing that a too well-equipped center would encourage refugees to remain in Jordan in hopes of returning to Kuwait, rather than accepting repatriation. Several hundred tons of United Nations rice have been flown into Jordan for Asian refugees, but in the absence of cooking facilities at most camps, the majority are receiving rations of bread instead.

In all, the government said Wednesday, 589,457 displaced persons have entered Jordan since the Iraqi invasion. Most have been Egyptians who typically spend less than 24 hours in the country before being repatriated by a Saudi-financed airlift and sea lift based at the Red Sea ort of Aqaba. Of the total, about 80,000 have been Jordanians and Palestinians who have the right to remain in Jordan.

For the first time, an emergency repatriation airlift is now keeping pace with new refugee arrivals. On Tuesday, 7,322 Asians arrived, but on Wednesday 10,111 left by air, either on their own tickets, on an internationally sponsored airlift or on flights arranged by their home governments. India told Jordanian authorities Wednesday that it has already flown out 32,000 of its citizens on 216 flights and expects to continue repatriating them at the rate of around 3,000 per day.

Control of the influx, though, is tenuous. Visiting Amman, the head of the Iraqi Red Crescent, the Muslim equivalent of the Red Cross, told Jordanian journalists that there are 300,000 Egyptians and about 65,000 Asians in Iraq waiting to cross into Jordan. The Jordanian government has asked Iraq to limit the flow to 14,000 per day.

In addition, the Indian government estimated that at least 70,000 of its 120,000 citizens still in Kuwait want to leave.