BAGHDAD, February 9 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - The chief U.N. weapons inspectors said here Sunday, February 9, they had found a "change of heart" in Iraq's willingness to comply with U.N. disarmament demands and were leaving Baghdad optimistic.

"We're beginning to see a change of heart on the part of Iraq," the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director-General Mohamed ElBaradei told a press conference after he and U.N. chief inspector Hans Blix completed two days of key talks with Iraqi officials.

"We made good progress ... We are leaving with a sense of cautious optimism," he said, adding that "Iraqi cooperation in all areas has to be simultaneous," reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).

Blix, head of the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, earlier said that he too had "detected the beginning of a serious attitude on the part of the Iraqis on substance."

His mission here was the "beginning of taking those outstanding (disarmament) issues more seriously," Blix said.

But he cautioned that while Iraq's cooperation on the process of implementing U.N. Security Council Resolution 1441 had been satisfactory it remained less forthcoming on the substance.

"Access (to suspect weapons sites) has been prompt and practical," Blix told reporters.

"Cooperation on the process (of Resolution 1441) had been good" while Iraq's commitment to the substance of the directive had been "less good."

Blix and ElBaradei, who held three rounds of talks with senior Iraqi officials at the foreign ministry, are scheduled to report their findings to the Security Council on February 14.

That presentation could have a momentous impact on Iraq's future in view of mounting threats by the United States to invade and occupy the country.

In practical terms, the Blix-ElBaradei mission yielded a promise from Iraq to respond by Friday to a U.N. request for the use of U2 spy planes for aerial imagery and surveillance.

"We should have a response on that issue before Friday," Blix said.

Iraq has agreed in principle to the flights but has been reluctant to authorize them on grounds it could not guarantee their safety while U.S. and British warplanes operate patrols in the self-styled "no-fly" zones in the north and south of the country.

Iraq fears that one of the U2 aircraft could be shot down by a U.S. or British plane, with Washington blaming the Iraqi military and using the incident as an excuse to declare war.

Blix said Iraqi authorities had also provided the United Nations with documents on its experience with deadly anthrax bacteria and on the status of its Al-Fatah and Al-Sumoud missiles and pledged to form a commission to unearth all data pertaining to weapons programs.

Just prior to their arrival of the inspectors Saturday, February 8, Iraq announced that another long-standing U.N. demand had been met, with five Iraqi scientists agreeing to be interviewed by U.N. inspectors in the absence of government officials.

Blix welcomed the development and said he hoped it would signal "the turn of the tide" in Iraqi cooperation.

Iraqi Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan, who had lunch with the two inspection leaders on Sunday, later called on them to confirm Iraq's "serious cooperation" with the disarmament process in their February 14 report.

He "reiterated Iraq's call for the activities of the inspectors in Iraq to be objective and professional," the state news agency INA reported.