The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) will send inspectors back to Iraq to probe the disappearance of nuclear materials and equipment in the country, a spokesman for the UN nuclear watchdog said Wednesday.

"We are ready, subject to Security Council guidance and the prevailing security situation, to resume our Security Council mandated verification activities in Iraq," IAEA spokesman Mark Gwozdecky said.

His words came in response to an IAEA report submitted Monday to the UN Security Council, in which its head Mohamed ElBaradei said satellite images show equipment and materials that could be used to make nuclear weapons have vanished from Iraq.

Entire buildings once monitored and tagged by the agency have been dismantled, and equipment and materials in open storage areas have been removed, ElBaradei said, calling on countries to provide information concerning their whereabouts

The chief inspector said that through visits to other countries, the IAEA had been able to identify quantities of industrial items, some radioactively contaminated, that had been transferred out of Iraq from sites monitored by the agency.

"However, none of the high-quality dual-use equipment or materials referred to above has been found," he added. The equipment's disappearance could be "of proliferation significance".

But Iraqi Science and Technology Minister Rashad Mandan Omar said Wednesday that his country's nuclear facilities are under full protection of the interim government. He invited the IAEA to visit the sites at any time.

While noting that nothing had gone missing after the US-led war in March 2003, Omar pointed out that several buildings at Tuwaitha, a large compound for nuclear facilities in the south of Baghdad, had been renovated to turn the area into a science park.

Other officials of the ministry said the IAEA came back two months ago to inspect some facilities and seal some equipment. The equipment has been transferred by the Iraqi government to other heavily-guarded places.

Since 1991, the IAEA has been required by UN Security Council resolutions to submit progress reports every six months on its inspections of Iraq's nuclear weapons program. However, the agency pulled out of the country on the eve of the war last year, and since then has been concentrating on analyzing information collected before.