Saudi Arabia announced on Saturday it was sending a delegation to Iraq ahead of opening an embassy in Baghdad where its last mission closed nearly 25 years ago.

A foreign ministry statement said the delegation would "take the necessary decisions to choose and equip buildings" for an embassy in Baghdad and a consulate in Arbil, capital of the autonomous Kurdistan region in the north.

Diplomatic relations between Saudi Arabia and Iraq were severed in 1990 but restored in 2004 after the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime.

However, Riyadh had not yet reopened its embassy in Baghdad.

This mission to do so was decided after contacts between the neighbouring states, the official SPA news agency cited a Saudi foreign ministry spokesman as saying.

Last November, Iraqi President Fuad Masum visited Saudi Arabia for the first such high-level trip in years in a sign of warming relations after years of strain between the two countries.