UN agencies stepped up their relief efforts, and the United States announced it was easing a travel ban to Iraq to speed the entry of American contractors and members of US-funded aid projects.

Kuwait, Iraq's southern neighbour and the launching pad for the US-led invasion, was the conduit for most of the supplies and personnel and the emirate's government said it, too, was providing help.

Even France, which fiercely opposed the US-led war on Iraq, was preparing to deliver 30 tonnes of aid after President Jacques Chirac pledged a "pragmatic role" for his country in rebuilding Iraq during a phone call to US President George W.Bush.

The efforts, however, were taking place against an ongoing debate over who should be ultimately responsible for helping the Iraqi people and controlling an interim administration.

The United States is claiming those functions for itself, but many countries -- including the Gulf states, the European Union and UN Security Council members China, France and Russia -- want to see the United Nations take charge.

With the war technically not yet over, and the threat of looting and armed robbery still hanging over much of Iraq, aid groups have been wary about returning to the country.

"We cannot say the situation is under control on the humanitarian side," a spokeswoman for the Geneva-based International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), Nada Doumani, said Tuesday.

"There is still a lot to do, especially in the Iraqi capital where the security question is still a priority."

A severe shortage of water in southern Iraq, overcrowded hospitals struggling with lack of staff and equipment in Baghdad and other cities, and electricity almost nonexistent across the entire country has forced the agencies to act.

Drinking water was being ferried in daily by truck, augmenting a water pipeline built by British military engineers from Kuwait into southern Iraq, and foreign doctors were making their way to hospitals to help out harassed Iraqi staff.

The head of the medical emergency department in Kuwait's health ministry, Mohammed al-Sharhan, told the state news agency KUNA that a convoy of Kuwaiti doctors, medicine and equipment were heading to the southern Iraqi port of Umm Qasr Wednesday.

In Paris, the French foreign ministry announced Tuesday that a French plane with 30 tonnes of aid, including water purification units, medicine and food, was to leave for Amman on Thursday. Its cargo was then to be driven to Baghdad aboard a convoy of trucks.

The Czech government said it was to send a field hospital with 240 medics to the southern Iraqi city of Basra.

And the Italian government said it was deploying 3,000 people to Iraq, including paramilitary police, doctors, nurses, architects and engineers.

Meanwhile, the US State Department said it had rescinded parts of a 12-year ban on Americans travelling to Iraq to allow US diplomats, other government personnel and contractors, American UN workers and private citizens engaged in US-funded aid projects to enter the country legally on their passports.

However, it kept in place a ban prohibiting the general US population from using US passports to visit Iraq, citing security concerns.

"The secretary (Colin Powell) is taking this step to enable these organizations to bring urgently-needed humanitarian and reconstruction aid to Iraq," spokesman Philip Reeker said.

In a letter to Britain's Times newspaper, Queen Rania of Jordan appealed to US President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair to ensure Iraq is sufficiently safe for aid organisations to get to work, and for casualties to be evacuated for treatment.

"The more concerted our efforts are, the more lives we can save and the more suffering we can spare," said the queen, who is an active supporter of the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF).

"No population deserves such suffering," she said.

SPACE.WIRE