U.N. food workers will not begin delivering the food until fighting has stopped. Until then, Iraqis will have to rely on coalition forces distributing aid. British troops handed out food near Basra last week after RFA Sir Galahad made a delayed mooring at Umm Qasr after fears that under water landmines existed in the Gulf. 

U.S. General Tommy Franks told reporters at Central Command Monday that the entire Iraqi coastline has been secured paving the way for humanitarian aid shipments. 

The WFP aid is likely to consist of wheat flour, pulses, cooking oil, rice, salt, sugar, dried whole milk and infant-weaning foods. 

The $1.3 billion is planned to last six months -- the first 30 days to be focused on meeting the needs of refugees, the following two months on the whole of the 26 million Iraqi population, and the last months on the most vulnerable. Iraq's existing food distribution system would be used. 

It is planned $270 million will come from the U.N. oil-for-food program which was disrupted at the start of the war. 

The rest must come from donors, Morris said, adding that Britain had made a large donation, Australia had promised 100,000 metric tons of food and America would soon contribute a substantial amount of food.  The WFP has bought 160,000 tonnes of wheat flour and 84,000 tonnes of rice for Iraq. The two purchases are thought to  be the biggest one-time acquisition of foodstuffs on the grain market by WFP for a humanitarian operation in the past decade.  He said distribution in Iraq would dwarf the scale of the WFP's operations during and after the conflict in Afghanistan, adding that operations would be staged from Iran, Turkey, Syria and Jordan, among other countries.

Members of the British Light Infantry distribute aid  packages to Iraqi civilians at Az Zubaya, Iraq,  near Basra