Iraq said on January 12 that it had agreed to allow the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to resume the nuclear inspections inside the country.

A team from the IAEA will arrive in Iraq next week to check if the country possesses any nuclear weapons, Nizar Hamdoon, deputy foreign minister, told foreign media in Iraq.

The renewed inspections are part of world-wide monitoring of nuclear facilities by the Vienna-based IAEA and had nothing to do with the UN arms verification program, now suspended, Hamdoon noted.

Baghdad had given a "favorable answer to a request from the IAEA in the framework of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty," he said. In 1969, Iraq signed the treaty under which inspections are held aspart of safeguard obligations.

"The team sent by the IAEA will have four or five members and will carry out routine activities in Iraq," he added.

IAEA inspections in Iraq have been halted since December 1998, when Britain and the United States launched air-strikes against Baghdad for alleged failing to cooperate with UN disarmament inspectors.

The IAEA, which was also involved in the UN campaign in Iraq alongside the USOM special commission on disarmament, declared in October 1998 that it had found no evidence that Iraq had produced nuclear weapons.