“I perceive a beginning . . . Breakthrough is a strong word for what we are seeing,” Hans Blix, the chief UN weapons inspector, said.

However, he added: “I would much rather see inspections than some other solution,” referring to Washington’s threats to launch a military strike.

“I would say I’m beginning to see a change of heart for Iraq,” Mohamed Elbaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said. “Now that new attitude will be tested in the next few days and weeks.”

The two men are to report to the UN Security Council on Friday and anything less than a clear-cut Iraqi decision to throw open the country’s programmes for weapons of mass destruction will fail to placate Washington.

Iraqi officials did provide more documents to the two inspectors relating to anthrax, VX nerve gas and Iraqi missile development. They will be reviewed by UN experts in the next few days.

Dr Blix said that he had received promises from the Iraqis that they would expand a commission to search for weapons and “relevant documents nationwide” and that he had hopes that Iraq was taking the disarmament issues seriously.

But there was no immediate agreement on the UN’s demand that Iraq permits overflights by high-altitude American U2 surveillance aircraft to assist with the weapons inspections. Dr Blix said that he expected the Iraqis to respond to that demand by Friday. So far they have refused to accept U2 flights unless the United States and Britain suspend air patrols in “no-fly” zones while the spy planes are in the air.

The UN’s demand for private interviews with Iraqi scientists also met some resistance. While five scientists have been interviewed, the first four were not requested by the UN but were proposed by the Iraqi National Monitering Directorate — the Iraqi liaison to weapons inspectors.So far none of those on a UN list of 500 scientists and engineers have been interviewed outside the country.

Furthermore, no date was set for the approving legislation demanded by the UN to ban weapons of mass destruction. Again, however, Dr Blix said that he was hopeful that Iraq would soon comply.

Iraq said last night that it had been truthful throughout the new UN arms monitoring process and that it had presented the chief UN weapons inspectors with a “great deal of documents” during their crucial two-day visit to evaluate Baghdad’s compliance with UN disarmament demands.

“We have been truthful throughout (since the implementation of Security Council Resolution 1441),” General Amer al-Saadi, President Saddam Hussein’s senior scientific adviser, told a press conference in Baghdad. “We presented a great deal of documents which represent our work.” He said that 11 letters on the technical details of nuclear programmes and 24 documents related to biochemical and missile weapons had been handed over.

He said that Iraq believed that the information provided to Dr Blix and Dr Elbaradei “should satisfy the sceptics and also satisfy the fair-minded”. “If something else happens, that could happen, but we hope sanity would prevail, the fair-minded will prevail,” he said.

He said that he was heartened by reports “coming from within the United States” that questioned evidence presented Wednesday by Colin Powell, the Secretary of State, before the UN Security Council.

“The burden of proof here, in this case specifically, since they are intent on waging war . . . the burden of proof falls on them, not us,” General al-Saadi said of the United States. “How can we prove that we don’t have them when we don’t have them at all?” he added, referring to weapons of mass destruction.

In Washington Condoleezza Rice, President Bush’s National Security Adviser, said that the Administration had expected minor concessions from Saddam but they would not suffice. “People are going to be very sceptical of anything that he does at this point, because an eleventh-hour conversion has been his modus operandi before,” she said.

As the two inspectors were locked in meetings with the Iraqis, their colleagues found another empty chemical warhead at an ammunition depot in the north of Iraq, bringing to nearly 20 the number found so far. None has contained chemical agents.

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