Libya said today it would sign on to snap UN nuclear inspections allowing short-notice checks of its nuclear sites.
Foreign Minister Mohamed Abderrhmane Chalgam called on Israel in turn to start dismantling any weapons of mass destruction.
Mr Chalgam stressed that Libya's weapons programmes had been at a laboratory level and his country had never created nuclear weapons with any of the know-how it had acquired.
IAEA Director-General Mohamed ElBaradei said there were no signs Libya had enriched uranium.
Mr ElBaradei said after talks in Tripoli that Libya had promised to dismantle all its weapons of mass destruction programmes, chemical, biological and nuclear.
He told a joint news conference with FM Chalgam that a team of IAEA experts, who have led inspections in both Iran and Iraq, would begin technical talks with the head of Libya's nuclear programme tomorrow.
Tripoli, which has signed the 1968 nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, will now sign the so-called NPT Additional Protocol permitting the more intrusive, short-notice checks.
Tripoli can sign the document after if the IAEA Board of Governors gives the go-ahead at its next meeting, in March 2004.
