Jordan’s Refugee Crisis Nearly Over, U.N. Officials Say : Relief: Only 37,000 people remain in camps. An airlift is expected to cope with arrivals, unless war breaks out.

International relief officials Saturday proclaimed a virtual end to the two-month refugee crisis in Jordan while they begin to make plans for potentially larger numbers of refugees should war break out in the Persian Gulf.

There were still about 37,000 Asian refugees in well-ordered tent encampments in Jordan, but they are being moved out at the rate of about 7,000 a day, representatives of the U.N. Disaster Relief Office (UNDRO) said Saturday.

About 80,000 more migrants are expected to come overland to Jordan from Iraq and Kuwait in the coming weeks, but a multinational airlift under way from both Amman, the Jordanian capital, and the southern port city of Aqaba is expected to keep up with the flow.

In all, almost 700,000 refugees have fled Kuwait and Iraq since the Iraqi invasion of the oil state on Aug. 2, officials here say. The scenes of desperate searches for food and shelter have all but disappeared from Jordan’s desert horizon, to be replaced by an organized relief effort staged by numerous public and private groups.

“If the present rate of arrivals, and the forecast of arrivals, is maintained and if the departure rate is stepped up, the exercise of evacuation would be over by the end of October,” said Mohammed Essaafi, undersecretary of UNDRO.

Essaafi cautioned that the orderly outflow depends on continued international financing of the refugee program. Money has been a source of friction between Jordan and relief agencies, with Jordan complaining that it has had to pay for land transportation through the country.

In addition, an outbreak of war would greatly increase the number of refugees, changing official calculations.

“What I say today might not be true tomorrow, given the fluidity of the situation,” Essaafi said.

Officials are meeting in Amman to work out plans for another massive exodus.

The U.N.-affiliated World Food Program has stockpiled three months’ supply of food in warehouses on the Mediterranean island of Cyprus. The food is meant to feed 120,000 refugees and would be delivered to Jordan or other key exit points for the migrants.

Tents, drainage pipes, blankets and other needed materials are being collected in case more refugee camps have to be set up. Precise estimates of needs are difficult to come by and perhaps meaningless, given the potential numbers. A million Egyptians are working in Iraq along with hundreds of thousands of other Asian and Arab laborers.

“If war begins, who knows what really can be done?” said an official from the International Committee of the Red Cross.

“In war, maybe everyone will move, maybe no one will be able to.”

Winter is much on the minds of relief officials, who note that many of the tents set up to shelter refugees during the past eight weeks are inadequate for the winds and rain of the desert winter. “We are in the process of contingency planning against these enemies, but . . . there is no perfect protection against them,” said Essaafi.

These concerns seem far away from the relative tranquility at Azraq, a desert oasis town northeast of Amman where two large refugee camps have been established in the wake of the influx of Asian refugees.

At Azraq I camp, about 12,000 Indian citizens were in various stages of transit Saturday. New arrivals bedded down under large green or pale blue tents. Refugees bused in over the past day or two lounged in the shade, took outdoor baths or cooked rice and lentils over gas-fueled stoves.

Groups of evacuees preparing to leave Saturday lined up to board buses to take them to Amman’s international airport for the last leg of the trip home. The average waiting time between arrival at Azraq and departure for the airport is about three days, refugees and officials said.

“We are very happy with the conditions here,” said Mohammed Abdul-Rahman, who reckoned that he would be boarding an airport bus late Saturday. Rahman left Kuwait three days ago, abandoning his job as a construction worker and leaving the equivalent of $30,000 in a Kuwaiti bank. The banks are closed in Kuwait and, in any case, Kuwaiti money has been been merged into Iraqi currency; if withdrawn, Rahman’s money would be worth just $3,000 in Iraqi currency.

“I hope the Iraqis are expelled soon,” he said.

Several of the refugees had heard tales of the difficult conditions experienced by many of their predecessors on the long trek across the Iraqi desert to Jordan. In the chaotic early weeks of the crisis, transportation, food and water were in short supply, and intense heat and bottlenecks at the border brought on illness and short tempers.

“This is like home in comparison,” said Devendar Kumar Sinak, an Indian. “We have food and shelter and everything is clean.”

Sinak and other refugees who were interviewed reported that Kuwait was relatively quiet when they left. Some shooting was heard at night and Iraqi soldiers had set up checkpoints to inspect documents and search cars. The Indians said they had no trouble leaving by bus, although they had to pay the equivalent of $300 for the trip through Iraq to Jordan.

Unlike many of their countrymen, the Indians did not have to stay in Baghdad where, during the past month, Iraqis had detained traveling refugees in squalid makeshift camps without adequate supplies of food and clean water.

The refugees who have fled Kuwait come from as far away as the Philippines, Sri Lanka and Pakistan. Besides Egyptians, workers from the Arab world include Syrians, Yemenis and Sudanese. All were attracted to Kuwait by a relative abundance of jobs and high wages. About two-thirds of the population of Kuwait were foreigners.

The Jordanian government and the United Nations are still at odds over payment for relief services. Jordan has complained that it has paid for land transportation within its boundaries at a time when the country’s economy is suffering from reduced trade with Iraq. Jordan has reluctantly enforced the U.N. trade embargo on its neighboring country and ally.

“In the next U.N. plan, whatever it is, we want Jordan to be taken care of first,” said Salameh Hammad, an Interior Ministry official. Hammad wants international donations to flow directly to the Jordanian treasury instead of being disbursed through international relief agencies.

Foreign relief officials have complained that Jordan skimmed off some food supplies arriving from abroad and has imposed an airport tax on refugees as they left the country. For a time, Jordan also charged landing fees for international jetliners coming to pick up the migrants.

Essaafi, the U.N. relief official, appeared to recognize Jordan’s plight Saturday, saying money will be found to finance ground transportation to take the burden off the Jordanian government.