AMMAN, Jan 5 (AFP) - Former US attorney general Ramsey Clark plans to lead a flight to Baghdad next week to challenge the UN-imposed sanctions on Iraq, a statement received on Friday said.

Clark and 50 anti-sanctions activists from the United States will fly to Baghdad from Amman January 13 "in the fourth Iraq sanctions challenges by Clark's International Action Center," the statement said.

"They will defy US/UN imposed sanctions by taking supplies to Iraq without licence," it said.

Almost half of the delegates accompanying are students and educators from US colleges and universities and they have timed the trip to mark the 10th anniversary of the US-led Gulf War against Iraq to drive it out of Kuwait.

Clark, who has visited Iraq on several occasions since the war, was in Baghdad a year ago, when he led a delegation of US humanitarian organisations to give the country aid worth an estimated two million dollars.

The United Nations imposed sanctions on Baghdad, including a commercial air ban, following Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990.

Since August Arab and Western countries have organised several humanitarian flights to Baghdad in a concerted effort to break the sanctions.

Jordan, the first Arab country to organise such a flight, is sending a medical team headed by Health Minister Tareq Suheimat to Baghdad on January 12, official Petra news agency reported Friday.

Meanwhile four British volunteers from the charity group Voices in the Wildnerness were Friday in Amman on their way to Baghdad for a 10-day solidarity trip.

Group leader Richard Byrne told AFP they were taking toys for Iraq's children as well as medical journals and supplies such as dressings, syringes and bandages.

But their departure planned for dawn Friday was delayed because their luggage was lost during their trip over from Milan.

"We hope to be leaving by dawn Saturday by bus whether or not we get our luggage," Byrne, a veterinarian from London, told AFP.

He will be accompanied by Brighton writer Milan Rai, social worker Les Gibbons from Southampton and Birmingham restaurant manager Zia Chowdhury.

"We want to learn as much as possible about the impact of the sanctions and campaign for a lifting of the sanctions in Britain during the general elections that will take place in mid-2001," Byrne said.