AOUR-AOUSSA, Djibouti -- In the transit camp at Aour-Aoussa, the women huddle under makeshift shelters, constructed of stone, plastic bags and scraps of cloth, awaiting with growing anxiety the deadline of September 15 to leave the territory of Djibouti.

There are 6,000 illegal immigrants in this camp which sprang up on a sun-baked rocky plain two weeks ago: Ethiopians, Somalis, Eritreans, Yemenis and Sudanese. According to the Djibouti authorities another 70,000 illegal immigrants have left since the end of July.

Under the cover of anonymity several Djiboutian officials confirmed earlier this month that United States pressure was behind the forced exodus, but the U.S. Embassy here said in a communique it had "nothing to do" with it and chalked the affair up to "a rumor relayed by some media".

Some 1,500 U.S. troops have been based here since late last year as part of the "war on terrorism" in the Horn of Africa, considered one of the world's most unstable areas. Djibouti is also home to France's biggest overseas military base, with 2,800 troops. The France-based International Federation of Human Rights Leagues has charged: "The decisive element of this decision seems to be the pressure exerted by the United States, which recently warned national authorities about possible terrorist attacks on Western interests in Djibouti."

"Conditions here are very difficult. For the moment they are only given two meals a day," says Suleiman Elmi, the administrator at the camp, which is about 100 kilometers (60 miles) south of the town of Djibouti.

"Feel this piece of bread: See how old and stale it is!" says a man clutching the end of a loaf. "We don't have enough to eat, enough to drink, enough shelter," says another.

But the principal worry for the camp's inhabitants, some of them resident in Djibouti for many years, is what the National Office of Assistance to Refugees and the Displaced (ONARS) plans for them.

"I don't want to go back to Ethiopia," says Ali Memene, the fear evident in his eyes. A small, thin man dressed in rags, he came to Djibouti with his wife and five children and backs the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF), an ethnic independence movement in Ethiopia.

"If they take me back by force, they'll kill me," he says. But that is what the authorities in Djibouti plan for him.

According to Ahmed Hussein Affi, director of ONARS, few of the immigrants will be allowed to stay. They do not have papers showing they have requested asylum and they are not southern Somalis who are automatically given refugee status.

When they see Elmi in the company of visitors they crowd round, trying to tell their stories and put their cases, under the eye of a policeman who waves a baton as the noise level rises.

"I want to register (as an asylum-seeker) and get a certificate," says 25-year-old Yusuf Zebib, a deserter from the Eritrean army.

According to Theophilus Vodounou, of the United Nations refugees agency, about 2,000 people have this precious and increasingly often counterfeited document.

The time for the midday meal approaches and people get busy cooking a common meal, prepared in a number of large pots. "After the meal, it's time for khat", a mildly narcotic plant whose leaves local people chew for hours, says Elmi. "Once everyone starts to munch, things calm down."