ROME (March 29 2003) : The UN World Food Programme (WFP) will spend fundsraised from a planned appeal for over $1 billion for Iraq on vitalfoodstuffs including wheat flour, rice and cooking oil, its chiefspokesman said on Friday.

UN officials in New York said the UN's largest "flash appeal" in history,set to be announced later on Friday, would include $1.2 billion for WFP tobuy food for hungry Iraqis.

Food supplies to Iraqis have been disrupted by the US-led invasion andfood stocks in Iraq, already low, are running out.

WFP expects to rebuild a food distribution system for Iraq after theinterruption last week of the United Nations-backed oil-for-foodprogramme, which allowed Iraq to export oil and use the proceeds to buyfood and other basic goods.

Sixty percent of Iraq's 26 million people depended directly on the system.

"Money from the appeal will go on food and transport, the food basket thatIraqis would normally get under the public handout system," Trevor Rowe,WFP's chief spokesman, said.

"That means wheat flour, rice, pulses, salt, sugar and cooking oils," Rowetold Reuters.

Rowe said the oil-for-food programme used about 500,000 tonnes of food permonth.

WFP, the world's largest food aid agency, expects to distribute about30,000 tonnes of foods, already stockpiled in countries bordering Iraq, inthe first month of the conflict.

WFP may have to feed the entire population in the subsequent three months,depending on the progress of the war, Rowe said.

"At the end of the fourth month, we should be phasing down to reach aboutfive million of the most vulnerable people, such as the elderly andnursing mothers," he said.

"This is based on the assumption that whoever will be running Iraq willhave taken over the public handout system."

Iraqi authorities were continuing to distribute food in the centre and thesouth of Iraq in areas where the security situation allows, ChristianeBerthiaume, WFP's spokeswoman in Geneva, said. She could not say where.

"This is good news. This could increase the food reserves of thepopulation in these areas," Berthiaume told reporters.

In the north, where WFP is responsible for distribution, WFP's Iraqiemployees were continuing to work but were focusing on families that havetaken in displaced relatives, she added.

Around Sulaimaneya in the north, prices of wheat flour and vegetables havedoubled since the closure of the main road south.- Reuters