SYDNEY, December 25 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - A U.S. senator said North Korea posed a greater threat than Iraq, as the United States saidit will neither bargain nor negotiate with North Korea after it announced it had removed seals at a nuclear reactor as a response to U.S. cut of fuel, a leading Australian newspaper reported Wednesday, December 25.

"This is a greater danger immediately to U.S. interests at this very moment, in my view, than Saddam Hussein is," retiring chairman of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Democrat Joseph Biden said, according to the Sydney Morning Herald.

Secretary of State Colin Powell discussed the growing crisis with his counterparts in China, South Korea, Russia and Japan over the weekend, said Lou Fintor, a State Department spokesman, North Korea confirmed earlier Sunday, December 22, it had begun removing eight-year-old United Nations seals and cameras at the Yongbyon nuclear reactor so it could start generating electricity.

The paper quoted Mohamed El-Baradei, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), as saying that because the spent fuel contains a significant amount of plutonium, the action was of great concern.

According to the Herald, Australia, one of the few Western nations with diplomatic ties to North Korea, added its voice. "I strongly urge [North Korea] to step back from the path it is taking, and to restore full co-operation with the IAEA in applying the containment and surveillance measures," Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said.

The crisis presents South Korean president-elect Roh Moo-hyun with the first test of his campaign pledge to maintain his country's policy of reconciliation with the North.

During a meeting between Roh and the retiring President Kim Dae-jung on North Korea, they were expected to demand that North Korea abandon its nuclear weapons program, even though they differ with the U.S. on how to get North Korea to acquiesce.

"His [Roh's] stance will be for dialogue," said Yu Jay-kun, a National Assembly member who has advised Roh on foreign policy. "That position will be permanent."

"Yu said, however, that Roh would encourage co-operation with the U.S. despite what he had viewed as President George Bush's hard line," the daily said.

The White House and State Department have said there can be no more talks with North Korea until it abandons its nuclear program.

Many in Seoul believe the North hopes to make the U.S. renegotiate the 1994 Geneva agreement under which Pyongyang pledged to freeze and eventually dismantle its nuclear program in exchange for commercial nuclear power.

"We should understand this move is part of a sequence," said an official at the Blue House, South Korea's presidential mansion. "Basically, they want serious dialogue."

"While the U.S. has been focusing on Iraq, which it accuses of hiding nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs, North Korea has forced Mr Bush to turn his attention to secretive communist country," the paper said.

U.S. intelligence believes Pyongyang probably already has built one or two nuclear weapons, it added.