BAGHDAD, Iraq - Iraq denied yesterday that it had failed to tell the United Nations about hidden weapons and invited CIA agents to lead U.N. inspectors to suspected arms sites.

Amir al-Saadi, an adviser to President Saddam Hussein, said at a news conference that questions about Iraq's arms program had been dealt with in its declaration to the United Nations and in discussions with U.N. inspectors working in the country.

Accusations by the United States and Britain that the Dec. 7 declaration contained omissions and fabrications "were based on old rehashed reports" from the previous round of "discredited" U.N. arms inspections, al-Saadi said.

"We are ready to deal with each of those questions if you ask us," he said. "We do not even have any objections if the CIA sent somebody with the inspectors to show them the suspected sites."

Al-Saadi also said Iraq would comply by year's end with chief U.N. inspector Hans Blix's request for a list of Iraqi scientists who might have knowledge of hidden weapons programs.

Washington and London, he said, should await the conclusions of the U.N. inspectors before jumping to their own.

"After 24 days of inspections covering practically all the sites named in those reports, and after the submission of our declaration, the lies and baseless allegations have been uncovered," he said.

Al-Saadi's comments were echoed yesterday in Iraqi newspapers.

"Everybody knows that if they had concrete information, they would have put it on television all around the world before giving it to the inspection teams," said Babil, the newspaper operated by Hussein's son Odai.

And Saddam Hussein, meeting with an envoy from Belarus, said, "We have told the world we are not producing these kind of weapons, but it seems that the world is drugged, absent or in a weak position," Iraq's official news agency reported.

In particular, al-Saadi defended Iraq's disclosure of efforts to obtain uranium from Niger and South Africa, an issue raised by the State Department when it called Iraq's declaration a "material breach" of U.N. declarations - language that laid the foundation for military action.

Al-Saadi said he had discussed the matter with leaders of the U.N. inspection team. He said that Iraq had obtained uranium oxide, not uranium, from Niger in the mid-1980s and that no such procurement had been made from South Africa.

"Are we hiding our procurement? We have answered on the record what we did," al-Saadi said.

Al-Saadi also said allegations that Iraq was trying to manufacture the nerve gas VX were based on information manipulated by U.N. inspectors in the early 1990s.

He said that sealed test samples were opened before testing for traces of the deadly agent and that European lab tests conducted later found no evidence of VX.

Iraq has maintained all along that it has no weapons of mass destruction. President Bush has said the United States is willing to go to war if Iraq is found in violation of U.N. resolutions, and his administration is continuing to move troops and materiel into the region.

The arms inspections continued at full throttle yesterday.

U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission teams inspected several sites, including a veterinary vaccines production company, a chemical plant and a space research and development center. International Atomic Energy Agency teams visited a computer center, electronics factory and welding technology institute.

U.N. officials declined to comment on the inspections.