BAGHDAD, Jan 29 (AFP) - The head of the UN "oil-for-food" program in Iraq, Benon Sevan, has returned to Baghdad after spending a week in Iraqi Kurdistan, where he explored ways of improving the humanitarian situation, a UN spokesman said Tuesday.

Sevan toured the provinces of Suleimaniyah, Erbil and Dohuk in the northern enclave and "held intensive discussions with local officials and UN agencies involved in implementing the oil-for-food program," Adnan Jarrar told AFP.

He said Sevan, who was accompanied by UN humanitarian coordinator for Iraq Tun Myat, examined ways of "accelerating the implementation of the oil-for-food program and rendering it more effective."

Sevan also inspected several facilities, including a hospital, a health center, a power station and a water treatment plant, built within the framework of the program, the spokesman added.

The Western-protected Kurdish enclave in northern Iraq has been off limits to the central government since the 1991 Gulf War over Kuwait.

The oil-for-food chief, who arrived in Iraq on January 14, is scheduled to continue discussions with Iraqi officials in Baghdad until he leaves in early February, according to Jarrar.

Sevan heads up a program introduced in 1996 to soften the impact of UN sanctions imposed on Iraq for invading Kuwait in 1990.

It allows Baghdad to export crude oil under strict UN supervision and to use part of the revenue to import food, medicine and other necessities.

Sevan has been a critic of the number of contracts blocked by the UN sanctions committee, which oversees the program.

In a January 8 letter to the committee, he said a total of 1,854 contracts were now on hold, worth a total 4.956 billion dollars. They included orders for 4.28 billion dollars worth of humanitarian supplies and for 676 million dollars worth of oil industry equipment.

Almost all the holds applied to areas of southern and central Iraq under the control of President Saddam Hussein's government. Only two were for imports to the northern Kurdish region where goods are distributed by UN agencies.