RUWEISHED, Jordan, March 18 (News Agencies) - With the U.S.-led military aggression hanging over the heads, Iraq’s neighbor countries are racing time to prepare for possible influx of refugees.

A series of cabins made of metal sheeting erected on a stony plain marks the site of one of two temporary camps which the Jordanian authorities have agreed to set up for refugees fleeing Iraq.

The camps will be erected some 60 kilometers (35 miles) from Jordan's border with Iraq, which is considered the safest and easiest direction for those who might flee Baghdad with the flare-up of a U.S.-led war, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP) Tuesday, March 18.

The tents that will be erected for the haven-seekers are nowhere in sight but a camp officials says 1,000 could be set up in one day.

The camps lie near Ruweished, the last frontier town before the border, and will be able to take in 10,000 refugees for a short transit period.

Jordanian workers dug trenches on Monday, March 17, to lay water pipes while others tested pumps, which will be used to extract underground water for the camps.

Three kilometers away a mechanical shovel, a cement mixer and a grader were busy as workers prepared a smaller camp.

Toilet and shower cabinets of metal sheeting were aligned and water cisterns installed for the eventual refugees.

The camps, which will be run by the Jordanian Red Crescent in cooperation with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), will be erected on the same land set aside by the Jordanian government during the 1991 Gulf war.

During that conflict Jordan hosted more than one million people who fled Iraq.

"We are capable of acting very quickly," the UNHCR spokesman in Amman, Peter Kessler, told AFP.

But Kessler stressed that he did not expect a huge influx of refugees to rush to Jordan in the first hours of war.

The UNHCR has means and equipment to assist, in an initial phase, 10,000 refugees in Jordan, 50,000 in a wider zone that would include Syria and 200,000 refugees across the region.

"So far we have spend 25.8 million dollars," Kessler said, adding that the UNHCR had recently raised its budget to 19.3 million dollars, which represent one third of its entire needs.

Meanwhile, the national carrier Royal Jordanian has opened a sales and reservations office in Ruweished to provide services for "foreigners, diplomats, employees of aid agencies or journalists" leaving Iraq through Jordan, a company spokesman told AFP.

Royal Jordanian has four weekly flights between Amman and Baghdad which could be suspended in the event of war, the spokesman said.

Iran Ready

In a related development, Iran formed a crisis headquarters to deal with the fall-out of a U.S.-led war on Iraq and a committee to deal with refugees from Iran's neighbor, interior ministry spokesman Jahanbakhsh Khanjani said Tuesday.

The headquarters headed by Interior Minister Abdolvahed Musavi-Lari has been formed to take measures with regard to the "probable consequences of the Iraqi crisis" in Iran, Khanjani said.

The government has given the interior ministry authority to deal with the crisis "considering the Iraqi refugees likely to enter on our soil, the political, social, security and environmental consequences of a war in the region and Iran", he added.

Head of the committee for refugees Ahmad Hosseini told AFP that Iran would only allow refugees in temporarily up to 20 kilometers inside the border if they face threats against their lives, including chemical and biological attacks.

But he said Iran was setting up 10 camps along the border to house some 200,000 people from southern Iraq, where most refugees are expected.

"The refugee crisis in northern Iraq must be solved in Iraq", he added, recalling the 800,000 Kurdish refugees out of a total of 1.3 million who fled to Iran during the 1991 Gulf War.

Iran's interior ministry puts the number of Iraqi refugees still living in Iran at 202,000.

"We need a 15 million-dollar budget and we cannot equip the camps without U.N. help, as we are already home to two million Afghans", Hosseini said.

He stressed that "this war may result in about one million refugees, so the world community should offer help".

Japan Aiding Refugees With Troops

In another development, Japan decided to dispatch troops to countries neighboring Iraq to aid refugees in the event of a U.S.-led attack, a report said Tuesday.

Japan will mobilize its forces as soon as it receives a request from the UNHCR and the consent of the neighboring countries, the Nihon Keizai newspaper said.

Japanese Defense Agency spokesman Manabu Shimamoto declined to confirm the report.

Japan has already decided to provide between 1.0 and 1.3 billion dollars to neighboring countries if war breaks out, government sources have said.

Japan is considering 250 million dollars for Jordan, 900 million for Turkey, 150 million for Egypt, 20 million for Syria and around 10 million for the Palestinians.

Tokyo plans to use chartered planes to evacuate Japanese nationals from the countries that border on Iraq, but will also consider using the C130 aircraft to return them to Japan if necessary, the paper said.

Meanwhile, human rights organization Amnesty International published a statement on Tuesday, appearing to accept the inevitability of war, and called for the protection of refugees and displaced people in Iraq.