BASRA, Iraq, 3 May 2003 — Flamboyant British tycoon Richard Branson, whose Virgin Atlantic airline hopes to start flying into post-Saddam Baghdad, personally brought humanitarian aid to Basra yesterday on the first civilian plane to land in the southern city since the war. In characteristically brash fashion, the 52-year-old billionaire landed in a Boeing 747 passenger jet bearing the Virgin Atlantic colors at Basra’s international airport, which has served as the British military base since the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime.

Branson saw little outside the well-fortified airport, with British soldiers taking charge of distributing the medical supplies, sheets and blankets he donated. But the airline chairman said his visit was all part of the rebuilding of Iraq.

“Aid agencies do their part as well. We have an airline; we can move quickly,” Branson told AFP. “If there is need for more (flights), there will be more,” he said.

Laid-back and with a wide grin across his bearded face, Branson was swarmed by well-wishers from the British military, some of whom had their pictures taken with him on the airport tarmac and asked the celebrity guest for autographs. “What a circus,” groaned one worn-out British soldier. “I was surprised when I saw that he was in a passenger jet. I thought he would come in a cargo plane, which could bring in a lot more material. What a waste.”

But Branson’s flight can nonetheless be seen as another publicity coup for Virgin Atlantic, which aggressively tries to project itself as a younger, more dynamic airline than its archrival British Airways.

Branson has already told the British government and humanitarian groups that Virgin Atlantic wants to resume regular flights between Britain and Iraq, suspended since the Saddam regime’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990.

A vessel from the World Food Program also docked in the southern Iraqi port of Umm Qasr yesterday bringing 14,000 tons of rice, in the first major shipment by the UN agency since the war. It will take more than a week to unload the ship, named the Rise. The sacks of rice will be distributed to different regions of Iraq through 32,000 agents still in place from the time of Saddam Hussein, according to the WFP.

In the Jordanian capital Amman, WFP spokesman Khaled Mansur said the rice was purchased by the agency through a donation by the United States. Umm Qasr is Iraq’s only deepwater port and the gateway for goods bought under the “oil-for-food” program, which let Saddam’s regime sell oil under tight UN supervision to purchase basics.

The program is expected to get back on track after the return Thursday to Baghdad of the United Nation’s humanitarian coordinator for Iraq, Ramiro Lopes da Silva, and other UN officials. Sixteen million people in Iraq were entirely dependent on daily food rations before the start of the US-led war on March 20. Mansur reported that shipments were also picking up pace by land, with 29 trucks transporting 1,084 tons of food from Kuwait to the southern Iraqi towns of Basra and Nasiriyah on Thursday.