Beijing: Welcoming Iraq's prompt submission of its declaration of weapons of mass destruction (WMD), China on December 9 called for a 'just and objective' assessment of the report to find a political solution to the issue.

"China welcomes Iraq's on-schedule submission of a declaration of weapons of mass destruction to the United Nations (UN) in accordance with the requirements of Resolution 1,441 of the UN Security Council," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao said.

"China holds that Iraq's report should be assessed in a just and objective way through UN inspectors' on-the-spot inspections," he said in response to Iraq's submitting a 12,000-page dossier on its WMD programme.

The UN Security Council, he said, should draw its conclusion after discussions on the reported results of the on-the-spot inspections in Iraq.

Liu said China, a permanent member of the UN Security Council, has always held that the international community should resolve the Iraq issue within the framework of the United Nations through political means.

"China hopes the Iraq's dossier will help the smooth progress of UN weapons inspections in Iraq," the official Xinhua news agency quoted Liu as saying.

On the Iraqi dossier, he said China would make a 'serious' and 'indepth' study of the report, which was presented to the UN as well as to the chief weapons inspector Hans Blix.

PTI