VIENNA: The chief of the UN nuclear watchdog, Yukiya Amano, will visit Iran on Monday and meet Tehran's chief nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili, the IAEA said.

Amano's visit comes ahead of a crunch meeting in Baghdad on Wednesday between Tehran and a group of world powers, to discuss concerns over Iran's suspected nuclear weapons drive.

Earlier this week, Iran and IAEA officials met in the Austrian capital for their first talks in three months, which were described by the agency as "a good exchange of views".

Amano on his Tehran visit will "discuss issues of mutual interest with high Iranian officials," the International Atomic Energy Agency said in a statement Friday.

Aside from Jalili, this will include "senior representatives of the Iranian government," it noted without elaborating.

The IAEA chief is due to arrive in Tehran Sunday, joined by the agency's chief inspector Herman Nackaerts and its number two Rafael Mariano Grossi.

A meeting between Iran and the IAEA, including Nackaerts, that was planned for Monday in Vienna was cancelled.

After the talks in Vienna this week, Nackaerts and his Iranian interlocutor, ambassador Ali Asghar Soltanieh, had said they would meet again on Monday.

The IAEA wants Iran to address claims made in an extensive agency report in November that at least until 2003, and possibly since then, it carried out "activities relevant to the development of a nuclear explosive device."

After two visits to Iran in January and February -- branded a "failure" by Washington -- the UN agency broke off talks, saying Iran was refusing to address suspicions of weapons research outlined in the November report and to allow it access to the Parchin military site.

Tehran insists its nuclear programme is solely for peaceful purposes.

On Wednesday, Iran will meet in Baghdad with the P5+1 world powers -- the United States, Russia, China, France, Britain and Germany -- plus the European Union, in separate talks that were renewed in Istanbul last month. AGENCIES