The new umbrella group, the NGOs Coordination Committee in Iraq (NCCI), will also establish a work-for-food program to encourage staff to return to work in Baghdad's hospitals, many of which were crippled by the US-led invasion and a subsequent wave of looting.

"Iraq only had a handful of NGOs before the war. Now the border's open there will probably be 50 or 60," said Philippe Schneider of the French NGO Premiere Urgence, which spearheaded creation of the NCCI.

"If we don't cooperate ... we'll overlap, and end up favoring one part of the people and not getting enough help to other people," said Schneider, whose group has provided infrastructural support for Iraqi hospitals since 1997.

He stressed that the committee would be "independent and neutral" of the US forces which have become responsible for the welfare of some 24 million Iraqis.

"We have to be independent about where we go and who we help," he added. But he said the US military might still have to be consulted on a regular basis.

More NGOs, both medical and non-medical, have been invited to join at a meeting set for Thursday.

Schneider said the committee would also try an innovative approach to encouraging Baghdad's hospital staff back to work: paying them with food.

"The medical staff are returning little by little. But there are non-medical staff and even some nurses who haven't come back to work," he said.

"It's a salary problem. The infrastructure of the health ministry is gone. We don't even know where they are. The doctors have some money. They're not rich, but they can afford to come in, but the others can't," he added.

The value of even hospitals cleaners could not be underestimated, he said, since "in one of them there's rats and mice running around."

Volunteers have already scowered the markets to see what kind of produce is available to work out a barter payment system, he said.

However, the NCCI will still have to address the security issue.

Most hospitals closed after sustaining damage during the US-led invasion which left them without electricity or water. But staff were also petrified by the frenzy of looting following the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime.

Premiere Urgence said it had started a survey of Baghdad's 33 main hospitals and found that 15 of the 17 it visited were at least partially open. One of the ones still closed has a broken generator and the other was badly looted.

The International Committee of the Red Cross found in a similar survey released Tuesday that of the 10 hospitals it visited only three were running properly. It cited security as the main problem and urged the US forces to protect medical centres.

Schneider added that the hospitals were still receiving dozens of wounded daily, including from gunshots and small shrapnel from the US bombings which people thought they could treat themselves but have become badly infected.

The other NGOs that have so far signed for the NCCI are Doctors Without Borders (Medecins Sans Frontieres), Life for Relief and Development, the Islamic Relief Agency, Intersos and Un Pont Fer.

SPACE.WIRE