"We remain ready subject to (UN) Security Council guidance and the prevailing security situation to resume our Security Council-mandated verification activities in Iraq," the watchdog International Atomic Energy Agency's (IAEA) spokesman Mark Gwozdecky said.

IAEA director general Mohamed ElBaradei has reported to the United Nations that equipment and materials that could be used to make nuclear weapons, in some cases entire buildings housing sophisticated technology, are disappearing from Iraq.

In a letter to the Security Council, ElBaradei said he was concerned about the "widespread and apparently systematic dismantlement that has taken place at sites previously relevant to Iraq's nuclear program" under deposed dictator Saddam Hussein.

So-called dual-use equipment -- which has peaceful as well as weapons-making applications -- is disappearing, ElBaradei said.

The October 1 letter to the United Nations was posted on the IAEA web site Tuesday.

The IAEA, whose inspectors left Iraq before the US-led war to topple Saddam Hussein began in March 2003 and have not been allowed to return for systematic verification activities, now must rely for its reporting on "open sources and commercial satellite imagery," ElBaradei said.

IAEA inspectors have made two brief trips since the war ended in April 2003 to check inventories at the Tuwaitha nuclear complex south of Baghdad but these were in response to looting and not part of weapons inspections under the agency's UN mandate.

"Tuwaitha is not the IAEA's concern at the moment," a Western diplomat said, referring to ElBaradei's letter. "ElBaradei was referring to other sites where the IAEA had Security Council-mandated safeguards."

All rights reserved. � 2005 Agence France-Presse. Sections of the information displayed on this page (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected by intellectual property rights owned by Agence France-Presse. As a consequence, you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any way commercially exploit any of the content of this section without the prior written consent of Agence France-Presse.