Jane Perlez, Jakarta – After a long delay, Indonesia announced a new body to oversee the reconstruction of Aceh, but it will start work without the help of a UN agency that had planned to spend $60 million on more than 35,000 houses.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, one of the top agencies involved in tsunami relief, quietly pulled out of the province last month after the Ministry of Foreign Affairs failed to approve the agency's proposals to rebuild housing, UN officials said.

The commissioner was given no official reason for the rejection, beyond a statement saying that the Indonesian government viewed the agency's responsibility to be involved solely with refugees rather than housing.

"There was a mismatch," Marty Natalegawa, a spokesman for the Foreign Ministry, said. "We want to ensure a match between the needs on the ground and the mission of the agency."

But the UN considers the commissioner to be the main agency that provides shelter to refugees. After the tsunamis, senior management at the UN asked the commissioner to play a major role in the reconstruction, and raised money for the agency on the grounds that it would rebuild ruined housing.

More than a month later, the Indonesian government announced Monday that the Agency for the Rehabilitation and Reconstruction of Aceh would be in charge of the longterm reconstruction of the province. A former minister of mines and energy during the Suharto regime, Kuntoro Mangkusubroto, is expected to be appointed as head of the agency.

The formation of the new body comes as frustrated foreign donors complain that competing layers of bureaucracy are holding back their efforts to start spending the massive amounts of money they have ready for reconstruction. Also, private corporations that have pledged millions of dollars say they have little information on where the money is needed in the province.

Housing is a critical issue among survivors, many of whom are now living in hastily built, cramped and crowded barracks. Reports of sexual abuse of women are becoming more frequent, according to a survey by Oxfam.

The plans submitted by the UN for housing were well under way and would have helped alleviate the pressures in the barracks, UN officials said.

About $40 million was raised for the agency from governments around the world to rebuild housing, and an additional $20 million was in the pipeline, they said.

In January, a shelter expert from New Zealand, Regan Potangaroa, met with some of the 4,000 survivors in the town of Kreung Sabe in Aceh, to ask them how they wanted their community rebuilt. The survivors outlined where the schools, the mosque and the government buildings should be placed, and suggested designs for the new houses, officials from the UN refugee agency said.

But the plan for Kreung Sabe sat at government offices, UN officials said. Several adaptations were submitted in an attempt to persuade the Foreign Ministry that other non-governmental organizations and UN agencies could be involved as well.

Late last month, the UN agency closed the three offices it had opened along the west coast and recalled its foreign staff. At a farewell in Banda Aceh, the vice governor of Aceh, Azwar Abubakar, said he was sad to see them go.

The senior UN representative in Indonesia, Bo Asplund, said he had asked the government to consider readmitting the agency. "We have spoken to the government and we'll have to see what decision the government makes," he said.