Non-governmental aid agencies are standing by on Iraq's borders but are unable to go in since the US-British military coalition wants to distribute humanitarian aid itself, aid workers said Saturday.

Meanwhile, the southern city of Basra, where people are running low on water, is a battle zone, stopping even military-carried humanitarian aid from going in.

And the main question may be whether the Western alliance that all but broke apart over the war in Iraq can heal itself and come together over the issue of rebuilding Iraq.

This political front is a tense one.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair returned Friday from a trip to the United States having failed to convince US President George W. Bush that the UN should have a lead role in running post-war Iraq.

Julie Smith, European analyst for the London-based think tank Chatham House, told AFP that Blair lost important clout with the Bush administration when he failed to win a resolution endorsing the war against Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's regime, accused of harbouring weapons of mass destruction.

Now Bush's administration, mistrustful of a politically divided and bureaucratically slow United Nations, wants post-war Iraq ruled under the direct control of the US military, even if it sees a role for the United Nations in distributing humanitarian aid.

Blair's backing for the UN forming a representative government in post-war Iraq aligns him with France, something that will hardly endear him to the Americans.

The Security Council on Friday adopted a resolution to allow the resumption of humanitarian aid for Iraq through its "oil-for-food" programme.

The United Nations also launched a 2.2 billion dollar urgent appeal, its biggest ever, to buy supplies for the Iraqi people.

An estimated 60 percent of the Iraqi population of 22 million depends on the "oil-for-food" programme for daily supplies. The programme under which Iraq is allowed to sell oil to buy certain basic supplies -- under UN supervision -- was suspended on March 18 just before the war began.

The four-page resolution, which gives UN Secretary General Kofi Annan the power to get the programme under way, describes the US and British forces in Iraq as "the occupying power," responsible for the civilian population under international conventions.

Non-governmental aid agencies are angered over the US insistence that aid must at first be provided by the military.

"We want to see the United Nations given the full mandate to do the job, as they have done many times before," said Alex Renton, on the Jordanian border with Iraq for British aid organization Oxfam, which specializes in water, sanitation and infrastructure.

"Military action and humanitarian aid do not go hand in hand," he said.

"A soldier with a gun in one hand and a loaf of bread in another is a dangerous thing," he added, referring to the possibility of drawing hostile fire.

The British naval ship the Sir Galahad became Friday the first relief vessel to reach Iraq since the war began, docking at the port of Umm Qasr after mines were cleared.

Renton said coalition soldiers were now distributing powdered milk for children, but if this were not mixed properly with clean water it could cause diarrhea, and in the current conditions in Basra, diarrhea can kill.

WAR.WIRE