UN Vice-Secretary General Louise Frechette gave the figure in a closed meeting of the UN Security Council, without naming the donor countries.

The UN had appealed for the 2.2 billion dollars in emergency aid, including 1.3 billion for food alone.

Frechette, who oversees all UN humanitarian aid programs in Iraq, said in a statement that the situation in Iraq was "not critical at present," but that "there still remains the danger" that it will become so.

She said some 3,000 Iraqi nationals working for the UN were on the ground in Iraq and that humanitarian deliveries were being "carried out on a pragmatic basis."

Diplomatic sources said France, which refused to join the war effort, had raised the question on the security council of getting humanitarian aid into Iraq and of the conditions of access to the civilian population.

Several council members asked for the rapid organization of an informal meeting between the council and non-governmental organizations operating in Iraq, said the sources.

They said the council was also told that a UN mission that went to the southeastern Iraqi port of Um Qasr on Wednesday found that the port, secured by US and British forces, was safe for ships delivering humanitarian aid.

However, transport and distribution of aid within Iraq posed another problem that would depend on the return of UN personnel pulled out of the country when war became a certainty.

That decision, said the sources, depended on the state of security and rested with Secretary General Kofi Annan.

SPACE.WIRE