VIENNA, October 18 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Iraq and North Korea are "both priorities" for the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said its Director Mohamed El-Baradei on Friday October 18.

"They are both countries where we have a mandate to ensure that they do not develop nuclear weapons and both are of equal priorities to us," Agence France-Presse (AFP) quoted El-Baradei as telling reporters at his headquarters in Vienna.

International inspectors could evaluate North Korea's nuclear weapons producing capacity "pretty soon" with both the Asian nation and Iraq now top priorities for the IAEA, he added.

"From a technical point of view, we would like to make sure that both Iraq and North Korea are free from nuclear weapons because they have an obligation not to produce nuclear weapons," said the IAEA chief.

He said determining which country was more dangerous was "a political assessment, looking at not just if they have weapons but whether in fact they are going to use these weapons."

El-Baradei said the international approach to both these states was the same, namely to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons, but "with different emphasis."

The United States stressed Thursday October 17, that Iraq and North Korea were not comparable, despite the fact that both could now possess weapons of mass destruction after this week's disclosure of Pyongyang's nuclear weapons program.

While Iraq remains the target of possible military intervention, either unilaterally by the U.S. or under U.N. auspices, should it inhibit U.N. arms inspections, both the U.S. state and defense departments made clear they intended to take the "peaceful" route, in consultation with allies, in dealing with North Korea.

The U.S. administration on Wednesday October 16 revealed that North Korea was now a nuclear power, with a developed weapons research program and at least two nuclear bombs, after Pyongyang made the admission to a visiting U.S. official two weeks ago.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld acknowledged Pyongyang's nuclear capability but refused to even envision a "preventive strike" against North Korea of the type being mulled for Iraq to overthrow the regime of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

Rumsfeld side-stepped a question on the differences between the Iraqi and North Korean regimes.

He argued it would be superfluous to send weapons inspectors to North Korea, in contrast to those bound for Iraq.

State Department spokesman Richard Boucher similarly stressed Thursday October 17, that "there's not one policy that fits all. Each situation has to be dealt with on its own. We want to deal with this situation peacefully with regard to North Korea. And we'll make the appropriate decisions."

General Richard Myers, Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the same briefing that U.S. forces would be capable of dealing with crises in both Iraq and North Korea simultaneously.

However, he noted, "We have no indications right now that anything unusual is going to occur necessarily in North Korea, and ... we don't have a presidential decision" for military intervention in Iraq.

Iraq would probably be unable to hide a nuclear weapons program if it allowed international inspectors back into the country, the IAEA chief asserted.

He also said that once inspectors were set up in Iraq, their very presence would be a deterrent to the country developing nuclear weapons, said.

"It is difficult for them to hide" a nuclear program, El-Baradei told reporters.

He said this was "providing of course that we have full-fledged inspections because nuclear (products) always have a signature. We can always see traces ... if they used highly enriched uranium or plutonium."

El-Bbaradei said the inspectors would carry out such measures as environmental sampling, gamma radiation surveys from helicopters, internal periodic visits to all capable sites and "interviewing all the former nuclear scientists to make sure that they are not working in the nuclear program."

El-Baradei said he hoped U.N. weapons inspectors would be returning to Iraq "within the next few weeks" once the U.N. Security Council passes a new resolution on the inspections.

He said the inspectors would have free access to all sites and that he expected this would apply also to presidential palaces, a sore point that caused the inspections to be halted in 1998.

El-Baradei said that in his "estimation" the limitations on visiting sites that the Security Council has agreed to "would be knocked down by (the new) Security Council resolution (stating) that everything in Iraq should be subject to immediate, unfettered access."