BAGHDAD, Iraq — The Iraqi regime launched a political and diplomatic campaign Monday that sounded like a plea for relief from the effects of economic sanctions and from the threat of renewed U.S. air attacks on its military installations.

Prime Minister Sadoun Hammadi, in a news conference, pledged his country's full cooperation with U.N. demands for disclosure and destruction of Iraq's nuclear capability and pledged also that if economic sanctions are eased, Iraq will use the money for food and medicine and not weaponry.

Hammadi, an economist appointed after the Persian Gulf War to Iraq's second-highest office by Saddam Hussein--who remains in total control of governmental power--said Baghdad would "implement in letter and in spirit" the U.N. resolution calling for destruction of Iraq's nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.

The United Nations and the United States have accused Iraq of evading the demands of U.N. resolutions and of frustrating the efforts of U.N. commissions sent to Iraq to inspect nuclear facilities. Gradually, the Iraqi authorities have made information available, but in the words of one U.N. inspector, the process "is like extracting teeth."

Meanwhile, Iraq has put its armed forces on alert, according to diplomats here, and called on Arab countries to protest U.S. threats of military action.

And Hammadi did not dismiss the possibility of U.S. and allied air attacks on a recalcitrant Iraq. In answers to questions, he appeared to see renewed war--and renewed defeat for Iraq--as a probability. "Iraq's military capability as compared to the United States is very well known," he said.

Yet the tone of the prime minister's remarks was conciliatory, aimed at obtaining an easing if not a complete lifting of economic sanctions that have closed Iraq to most world trade since its invasion of Kuwait last Aug. 2.

One proposal that would unblock about $5 billion in Iraqi bank accounts in the United States, Europe and Japan was endorsed recently by a U.N. commission as a way to avert starvation in Iraq.

There are reports that this year's harvest is bad. In any event, Iraq--despite its potential as a rich agricultural producer--imports two-thirds of its food.

Hammadi, who holds a graduate degree in economics from the University of Wisconsin, estimated that Iraq will need $3 billion this year to buy food, medicine and agricultural chemicals.