The same person could be counted once in the total provided by Cantor, and then again as reported by family members.

It has become clear, though, that the question of foreign citizens has been the most problematic in efforts to keep the city's count accurate. Over the last several days, the city's list of the missing became inflated by what officials said were missing persons reports from consulates and embassies for countries including India and Israel.

But interviews with many consulate officials yesterday suggested that the lists of people they were collecting varied widely in their usefulness. For example, the city had somehow received reports of many Israelis feared missing at the site, and President Bush in his address to the country on Thursday night mentioned that about 130 Israelis had died in the attacks.

But today, Alon Pinkas, Israel's consul general here, said that lists of the missing included reports from people who had called in because, for instance, relatives in New York had not returned their phone calls from Israel. There were, in fact, only three Israelis who had been confirmed as dead: two on the planes and another who had been visiting the towers on business and who was identified and buried.

In an effort to avoid further problems with the reports from foreign countries, Mr. Giuliani said the city had now created a separate list to deal with the names. He said that the new list, once it was sorted out, could come to include people who actually might be missing at the disaster site. But he and other officials indicated that that number was likely to be very small.

Indeed, Mr. Kerik said that the city's early inquiry into the newest 1,200 reports of foreigners perhaps missing had left him skeptical. One country, he said, had reported 56 people feared to be missing at the site. After checking, officials now believe that none, in fact, had been in the buildings.

Experts were not surprised by the difficulty of creating and maintaining a reliable list of people feared lost at the scene of the trade center attacks.