Iraq will hand in a key declaration on its military programs on Dec. 7, a senior Iraqi official said Tuesday. But he again denied that Baghdad had any weapons of mass destruction.Hussam Mohammed Amin, the chief Iraqi official liaising with U.N. arms experts, told reporters who asked if the declaration would contain any new elements:

"Of course the declaration will have new elements but these new elements will not, shall we say, necessarily include a declaration of the presence of weapons of mass destruction."

He repeated Iraq's standard denial that it has any such weapons.

"We are a country devoid of weapons of mass destruction. This fact is known to all countries including the United States of America and Britain and all those concerned," Amin, head of the Iraqi National Monitoring Directorate, said.

"We are going to deliver this declaration in the proper time on the seventh of this month," he said, adding that it would be transmitted to the United Nations by U.N. arms inspectors and experts of the International Atomic Energy Agency.

President Bush said Monday Iraq must supply a "credible and complete" list of its nuclear, biological and chemical weapons by the December 8 deadline set by U.N. Security Council Resolution 1441 giving Baghdad one last chance to disarm.

U.N. arms inspectors searched one of President Saddam Hussein's lavish palace compounds in Baghdad Tuesday in the biggest test of Iraqi cooperation since inspections for weapons of mass destruction resumed.

U.N. experts returned to Baghdad last month.

In a swoop on a suspect sites Monday, they said they had discovered some equipment tagged by previous inspection teams and several U.N. monitoring cameras had gone missing from a missile factory.

PHOTO CAPTION

An Iraqi policeman stands in front of al-Sojoud presidential palace in Baghdad as United Nations weapons inspectors arrive to search for weapons of mass destruction December 3, 2002. An Iraqi official said Iraq will hand in a key declaration on its banned weapons programs on December 7 but it will not necessarily include an admission that the country has weapons of mass destruction. (Suhaib Salem/Reuter