UN nuclear inspectors will visit Syria this month to investigate US claims that Damascus was building a secret nuclear reactor, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency has said.

"It has now been agreed that an agency team will visit Syria during the period 22-24 of June. I look forward to Syria’s full co-operation in this matter,” Mohamed ElBaradei told a meeting of the agency's 35-nation board of governors today.

Last September an Israeli strike force bombed the al-Kibar facility in the northeast Syrian desert and in April Washington claimed that the site had been a nuclear plant built in collaboration with North Korea. The CIA claimed that the site resembled the North Korean Yongbyon reactor and would have been capable of producing weapons-grade plutonium.

Dr ElBaradei did not say whether the inspectors would visit al-Kibar. Syria has kept the site sealed and has not responded to IAEA requests for co-operation with the inquiry. But the Associated Press quoted a senior diplomat as saying that IAEA officials had been told they would be given access to al-Kibar.

Syria has said that the bombed site was a disused military building with no nuclear element, dismissing the US charges as "absurd". The country denies covert nuclear ambitions and its one declared reactor is under IAEA supervision.

Dr ElBaradei repeated his previous criticism of both the Israeli raid and Washington's long delay in presenting its evidence to the IAEA. "It is deeply regrettable that information concerning this installation was not provided to the agency in a timely manner and that force was resorted to unilaterally before the agency was given an opportunity to establish the facts,” he said.

“Nonetheless, I should emphasise that Syria, like all states with comprehensive safeguards agreements, has an obligation to report the planning and construction of any nuclear facility to the agency,” he said.

“We are therefore treating this information with the seriousness it deserves and have been in discussions with the Syrian authorities ... to verify, to the extent possible at this stage, the veracity of the information available"

Washington responded with a call for Syria to comply with the inspectors' requests. "We would of course encourage them not only to let the inspectors in but to cooperate fully with the inspectors, allow them to do their job,” a State Department spokesman said.

He added: “Let’s hope that the Syrian efforts haven’t been too effective in covering up what it is they are trying to cover up: the nuclear facility reactor.”

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