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BAGHDAD, Wednesday (AFP) The war in Iraq is virtually over but efforts to rebuild the country's shattered economy and political system have gotten off to a halting start with no clear direction from the United States.

The fall Monday of Saddam Hussein's northern fiefdom of Tikrit gave the US military control of all of Iraq's main cities in less than four weeks, with minimal US casualties along the way. Washington can boast it was able to preserve the country's oilfields and ports, avoiding a feared ecological disaster. It kept Israel unscathed and out of the war and avoided a major clash between Turks and Kurds in the north.

But winning the peace is expected to be neither as quick nor as easy. Nor do the Americans seem as sure of their footing in civilian offices as they do on the battlefield. They were immediately confronted with waves of looters in central Baghdad, most coming from the poor Shiite suburb of Saddam City to wreak havoc in shops, public buildings, hospitals and hotels.

The Marines refused to intervene, leaving residents and merchants, most of them Sunni Muslims, exasperated. It took nearly a week for the first Iraqi policemen to be back on the streets.

The capital of five million people has been without electricity since April 4, when the lights went out as US warplanes pounded Baghdad and troops moved on the main airport to the southwest.

The lack of protection and basic services has infuriated Iraqis, who have turned up by the hundreds for three days running to protest in front of Baghdad's Palestine Hotel, where the marines are based.

"There is no one to talk to. There is no way we can communicate," moaned Ali Abdul Hadi, a 42-year-old former policeman.

US officials said they hope to restore power to part of Baghdad by the weekend. But Iraqis cannot understand how the most powerful nation on earth is having so much trouble restarting a power grid left largely intact.

Some have expressed the suspicion that the prolonged power outage is a deliberate ploy by American forces which consider themselves liberators but are still seen by many here as occupiers. The power problem has so far compromised any hope for a resumption of economic activity in Baghdad. Most shops remain closed, for fear of looters as well as a lack of infrastructure.

Public services and other municipal functions have also broken down at a time when the country's political future and US intentions for restoring an interim administration are still unclear.

A meeting of the Iraqi opposition organised Tuesday in the predominantly Shiite southern city of Nasiriyah was to help develop a new civil authority within a few weeks. But the process got off to a bad start.

Ahmad Chalabi, tapped by some Americans as a leading candidate to head the interim administration, stayed away from Tuesday's talks. Some 20,000 locals, mostly Shiites, took to the streets of Nasiriyah to refuse any US diktat.

And Jay Garner, the 64-year-old retired general designated civil administrator of Iraq, is still awaited in Baghdad despite the US deployment here and the disappearance of Iraqi resistance.

The guarded welcome given by Iraqis here to the US troops last week has been replaced by puzzlement and angry slogans.

Tensions are also rising between the US military and an international press corps increasingly frustrated by a lack of information or access to officials involved in the reconstruction effort.

To avoid a media fiasco even before the political reorganisation work gets under way in earnest, Washington is sending a communications veteran, Margaret Tutwiler, to head public relations effort.

Tutwiler was then-secretary of state James Baker's spokeswoman during the 1991 Gulf War.

Meanwhile British International Development secretary clare short said that it was the 'duty of humanity' that the international community reunites to help rebuild Iraq.

Briefing foreign journalists in London, she said it was "absolutely essential" to get the United Nations' oil-for-food programme up and running as soon as possible.

"You have to get it up and running before the people of Iraq decide how they want to rebuild their economy," Short said.

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