Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright criticized the US invasion of Iraq, saying Monday it had encouraged Iran and North Korea to push ahead with their nuclear programs.

Albright, who served under President Clinton, said "the message out of Iraq is the wrong one."

"The message out of Iraq is that if you don't have nuclear weapons, you get invaded. If you do have nuclear weapons, you don't get invaded," she said after an investors' conference in Moscow.

Albright visited North Korea in October 2000, becoming the highest-level American official ever to travel to the country. The two nations do not have formal diplomatic relations.

Albright also said Russia did not deserve membership in the Group of Eight major industrialized nations because it did not meet all the requirements.

"In terms of some criteria on open society, democracy, there are more and more questions, frankly," said Albright, who is now a business consultant.

In particular, she said Russia's state-controlled gas monopoly OAO Gazprom was being used for political ends and appeared to be "operating less as a gas company than as a state structure."

Moscow's reliability as an energy supplier was called into question this year when it briefly cut off natural gas supplies to several European countries in a dispute with Ukraine. The incident rattled European policy makers, who also accused Russia of using its substantial oil and gas resources as a political weapon.

Russia, which was admitted to the G-8 during the Clinton presidency, is hosting the group's summit in St. Petersburg next month.