WASHINGTON, May 23: The United States and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) are putting the finishing touches on plans for agency officials to head to Iraq next week, the State Department said on Friday.

“The US and IAEA are finalizing plans to send an IAEA team to Iraq under the protection and auspices of coalition forces to conduct a safeguard inspection of the nuclear material near Tuwaitha,” department spokeswoman Julie Reside said.

“We anticipate the departure of an IAEA team within the next week,” she added, without offering any other details on the mission.

Washington said on Wednesday that it expected IAEA inspectors to head to a nuclear facility in Al-Tuwaitha, south of Baghdad, after agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei warned of a potential humanitarian disaster if nuclear material were to fall into the wrong hands.

Officials stressed, however, that the IAEA’s involvement was related directly to its responsibilities under the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and had nothing to do with its role as part of the UN arms inspectorate that was working in Iraq prior to the US-led invasion.

The Al-Tuwaitha Nuclear Research Centre, one of Iraq’s main nuclear complexes, had been under seal since the 1991 invasion, but was hard hit by a wave of looting that followed the fall of Saddam Hussein’s government. —AFP