how can i stop apache from setting the file permisions of access_log to 640?

i'm running awstats on mandrake 9.2 and i can't do a manual update from the web because i - or apache - have no rights to read the log file. when i change the permission manually it works for a while time and then the permissions go back to 640.

i read about changing the default umask in the .profile, but i don't want to do that. i just want to change the way apache sets the permissions and not how root behaves by default. thanks in advance for any help.

How about changing awstats to the apache group?

doesn't work because the log files are created by root, since httpd runs as root. every time i chgown or chgmod the logs go back to root.root 640. i'm not very experienced in linux. just ported seriously about 3 months ago.