By Richard Halloran

Another squabble has broken out between the United States and the United Nations, this time over humanitarian aid to the Iraqi people. If it is not resolved, and quickly, the Iraqis — already hurting from the war — will suffer even more.

At issue is who will control the flow of water, food, medicine and other relief to those enduring the conflict. U.S. authorities say they will, asserting that relief workers cannot enter combat zones until they are made safe by the forces fighting Saddam Hussein's army.

U.N. and other international relief agencies contend that they are more experienced in conducting humanitarian operations than are soldiers and have demanded that they be allowed to operate independently, particularly of American military forces.

Part of the problem is that soldiers and civilian relief workers, regardless of their nationalities, come from different working cultures, have different missions and often just don't speak the same language.

Nasiriyah residents last week carried away food rations distributed by the U.S. 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit. Questions of how aid should be handled in Iraq are provoking a new international dispute. Associated Press

The United States and the United Nations, led by the French, quarreled earlier over the use of military force to get Saddam Hussein to comply with U.N. resolutions on destroying weapons of mass destruction. The Americans lost that argument but went ahead anyway.

Just getting started is a dispute over who will lead the reconstruction of Iraq after the war. The United Nations, again led by the French, says it should. President Bush said last week that the United Nations would have a "vital role" but that the United States and its allies would be in charge.

At the beginning, American, British and Australian troops were charged with not only defeating Saddam Hussein's forces but also with handing out rations and rendering medical care to Iraqi civilians whenever possible.

So far, those forces have managed to avert a humanitarian crisis, say reports to the Center of Excellence in Disaster Management and Humanitarian Assistance or COE, a U.S. research and training center in Hawai'i that monitors humanitarian disasters.

"No overall crisis," COE reported at midweek. It added, however, that the situation in Baghdad was "serious, chaotic and unpredictable."

Restoring reliable and clean water is a priority with medical supplies a close second, the COE reports say. Food has not been a problem because Iraqis stocked up before the war and the flight of displaced people has not materialized except in parts of Baghdad.

British troops have pushed through a 2-mile water pipeline from Kuwait to the port of Uum Qasr in southern Iraq. It has the capacity to carry 264,000 gallons a day, but low pressure has slowed that to a trickle. In Basra, the Red Cross has worked with local authorities to repair six backup electrical generators that power water pumps and the water supply has been stabilized. But in Baghdad, the supply is tenuous at best.

Medical shortages have appeared as hospitals are overwhelmed with the wounded. Some hospitals in Baghdad have admitted 100 injured people an hour. A hospital in Hilla in the central region has experienced the same rush. Supplies are running low in Basra, but the hospital in Umm Qasr has a three-month supply of essential drugs.

Before American troops moved into Baghdad, refugees were a minor problem. Some Iraqis who fled the cities, where 60 percent of the people live, went to families in the countryside. Others stayed home, hoping the war would wash over them. Still others had no way of crossing the desert outside of the Tigris and Euphrates valleys.

In the autonomous region where Kurds live in northern Iraq, 266,000 have fled to escape the fighting. About 90 percent are staying with families while 10 percent have found shelter in schools and other public facilities.

Curiously, Iraq's neighbors — Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria, Turkey, Iran, and Kuwait — have closed their borders and said they would not accept Iraqi refugees even though all, in varying degree, criticized the United States for attacking Iraq. In an inexplicable contradiction, 30 camps have been set up in those countries to accommodate 886,000 refugees.

When U.S. and allied forces secure Iraq, relief agencies are poised to go into the country. A Humanitarian Operations Center has been established in Kuwait and staffed with Kuwaiti, British and American officers to coordinate relief activities. International relief agencies have demanded that they take it over, but that does not seem likely.

Richard Halloran is a former New York Times correspondent in Asia and Washington. Reach him at oranhall@hawaii.rr.com.