BAGHDAD, January 1 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Chief UN arms inspector Hans Blix accepted Iraq’s invitation to hold talks in Baghdad ahead of a report he is due to present to the UN Security Council on January 27.

A UN spokesman said discussions were underway with the Iraqis on setting a date for Blix and IAEA Director General Mohammed ElBaradei to visit, Agence France-Presse (AFP) said.

General Amer al-Saadi, a top advisor to President Saddam Hussein, sent Blix a letter proposing he come to Iraq "between the second and third week of January" to discuss cooperation between the two sides, the official Iraqi News Agency (INA) news agency said.

Blix is due to report on the work of the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) in Iraq to the UN Security Council on January 27.

The proposed talks would aim at “reviewing cooperation between us during the past period and looking at ways of boosting that cooperation in the coming months to realize our common objective of a speedy implementation of UNMOVIC's mandate," Saadi wrote, according to the Arabic text carried by INA.

Together with the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), UNMOVIC resumed arms inspections in Iraq on November 27, nearly four years after UN arms experts left the country ahead of a U.S.-British bombing.

Baghdad has denied allegations that it has weapons of mass destruction, and the United States has threatened to attack Iraq even without an evidence of its alleged weapons of mass destruction.

Meanwhile, Iraq said British or U.S. warplanes bombed civilian installations in three provinces of southern Iraq Tuesday, December 31, without mentioning casualties.

The aircraft hit targets in the provinces of Misan, Dhi Qar and Wasat, before "taking flight under Iraqi anti-aircraft fire", a military spokesman told INA.

British and U.S. aircraft patrol no-fly zones over southern and northern Iraq which they have enforced since the aftermath of the 1991 Gulf war without the endorsement of any specific UN resolution.

Iraq refuses to recognize the zones in which there have been almost daily clashes in recent years. On Tuesday, Iraq again wrote to the United Nations to protest the civilian casualties from Allied air strikes in the zones.

Meanwhile, Iraqi Health Minister Omid Medhat Mubarak said in a visiting Spanish delegation the UN economic embargo imposed on Baghdad since its ill-fated 1990 invasion of Kuwait had killed more than 1.7 million Iraqis.

He accused the United States and Britain, two of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, of hampering contracts linked to medical equipment.

China, one of the five veto-wielding permanent members of the UN Security Council, reiterated Tuesday its opposition to U.S.-led military action, AFP said.

"I think we should let the inspectors ... continue their work ... and pursue a solution within the framework of the United Nations, through the political and diplomatic means," said Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan.