BASRA, Iraq — The United States has yet to spend almost 60 percent of its pledged $21 billion in reconstruction money for Iraq, even as the country struggles through a third summer of sporadic electricity and limited clean water.

Many schools have been built, water plants started and power stations finished — especially in the relatively peaceful south. But frustration is high.

Iraqis in the south look with envy at the Green Zone in Baghdad, with its air conditioning and hundreds of soldiers and police for security, while they don't have water, engineer Haider Albalhary told U.S. officials visiting his project site last week.

"Six months ago with no electricity, we said OK," Albalhary said. "One year, two years, now three years — enough. ... My friend, three years is a long time."

Iraq's ongoing violence has been one factor, both delaying projects by keeping U.S. engineers huddled on bases far from project sites and eating into the pledged American money, taking up between 20 and 23 percent of project costs, according to the Project Construction Office.

In addition, billions of dollars' worth of projects await approval by the U.S. bureaucracy, and hundreds of millions are tied up in stalled contract negotiations with U.S. companies.

Overall, about 58 percent of U.S. reconstruction money has not been spent, according to a federal inspector general's office.

At a donors meeting in Jordan yesterday, Iraqi Planning Minister Barham Salih expressed frustration at what he called Iraq's lack of control over reconstruction priorities and the pace of actual work — and said Iraq desperately needs power, clean water and improved sewage plants.

"The aspirations of the Iraqi people for a better life cannot be delayed much longer," Salih said.

Some critics say the window for the U.S. government to make a positive impression on Iraqis has long closed.

But even the most skeptical acknowledge tangible progress, particularly in the Shiite south and the Kurdish-controlled north, which elected leaders from their dominant groups to top posts in the new government.

More than 3,000 schools have been renovated nationwide, according to the Iraqi Reconstruction Management Office, and 40 new buildings have gone up in the south to replace mud huts that served as schools. At least three water-treatment plants, including an enormous project near Nasiriyah, are scheduled to open in the south in the next year.

More than 70 electricity projects have been completed, officials say. But a surge in demand has made power less available to many than before the 2003 invasion, and officials are eager to start work on at least three southern power plants in the next year to serve more than 400,000 households.

Many Iraqis pin their hopes for rapid development on the vast southern oil fields, source of the bulk of Iraqi petroleum exports.

But talks on refurbishing the oil wells are deadlocked over liability issues between the U.S. government and KBR, a subsidiary of Halliburton, said Raymon Sundquist of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

Overall, the U.S. reconstruction program is run by fewer than 1,000 American civilians who farm out most of the work to Western corporations stationed on U.S. bases.

Most of the onsite labor is local: Nearly 200,000 Iraqi workers have been hired, infusing money into the local economy, according to USAID and the Project and Contracting Office.

The U.S. military has focused on curbing the Iraqi insurgency.

That means American engineers must hire private guards to visit project sites, hampering their ability to verify that work is completed satisfactorily.

The reconstruction program has accelerated recently and is spending an average of $178 million a week for completed work, according to Iraq's reconstruction office. But progress is uneven.

The Basra airport and the Um Qasr sea port, for example, are each at least a year away from international accreditation, U.S. officials say.

The international rebuilding effort, meanwhile, is being funded through loans and grants from the World Bank, the United Nations and donor nations led by Japan.

At yesterday's conference, the World Bank announced final approval of $500 million in loans. Iraq, meanwhile, said it had "agreed in principle" to an additional $3.5 billion in loans from Japan.

While couching criticism in diplomatic language, officials from the World Bank and the United Nations made it clear that the $13.5 billion international rebuilding effort would differ from the U.S. approach.

Aid agencies and donor countries have looked on aghast at the freewheeling accounting standards and absent fiscal controls that they say have thus far characterized Iraqi reconstruction. Multimillion-dollar transactions have been conducted in cash, and there are allegations of rampant corruption.

Several countries, including Germany and Canada, have opted to contribute millions for training Iraqi soldiers and police in Jordan and the United Arab Emirates instead of in Iraq.

French President Jacques Chirac's government, which vocally opposed the Iraq war, recently paid to bring 330 Iraqi professionals, including lawyers and judges, to France for additional training.

Diplomats say they worry they wouldn't able to monitor money funneled directly to Baghdad.

"Of course we're concerned about where the money goes and corruption," said a Western diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "That's we why don't give anything directly to the Iraqi state. We prefer giving to Iraqis indirectly through our own organizations."

Information from the Los Angeles Times is included in this report.