PROGRESS.

The port of Umm Qasr -- Iraq's sole gateway to the Persian Gulf -- lay eerily quiet in mid-June. Large cranes that should have been lifting containers from arriving ships were idle. A blue-domed mosque for dockworkers was empty. A grain elevator and storage silos were barren and broken.

The waters of the narrow channel are so full of sludge, silt, sunken boats and unexploded bombs from the Iran-Iraq war that large boats can't dock there.

''This port hasn't been dredged in 12 years,'' Art Fletcher, a subcontractor to Bechtel Corp., which is in charge of upgrading the port, said as he looked at a multicolored chart showing water depths. ``The water coming from the river is dirty and constantly bringing silt. It's in bad shape.''

Upgrading Umm Qasr -- just 10 miles west of the Kuwaiti border -- is crucial to reviving the Iraqi economy, since it will sharply lower the cost of bringing goods in and out of the country, including humanitarian aid.

But the constant looting makes it a "two-steps forward, one step back" affair.

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