Baghdad: Iraqi Parliamentary Speaker Saadun Hammadi on August 5 invited the US Congress to send a fact-finding team to Baghdad for three weeks to check on allegations that Iraq was developing weapons of mass destruction.

Hammadi invited US Congress members to come to Baghdad with "nuclear, chemical and biological (NCB) experts" to check that claims of the US government that Iraq is developing weapons of mass destruction "are not true".

The invitation, which was carried by the official INA news agency, was sent to Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert and Senate majority leader Tom Daschle via a diplomat from the Polish Embassy, which represents US interests in Iraq.