Leaders face critical test over nuclear terror threat

HOMELAND Security Secretary Michael Chertoff yesterday said the world is facing a critical test as it seeks to keep nuclear weapons out of the hands of terrorists, and that there will be no way “to put that genie back in the bottle” if it fails.

Chertoff told a high-level panel on terrorism at the World Economic Forum that global leaders must make some hard decisions now if they want to avert catastrophe in the future.

“What we face in the 21st century is the ability of even a single individual, and certainly a group, to leverage technology in a way to cause a type of destruction and a magnitude of destruction that would have been unthinkable a century ago,” he said.

Chertoff said failure would mean a calamity that would dwarf even the September 11 attacks.

“You can’t put that genie back in the bottle once a weapon of mass destruction or a nuclear bomb gets into the hands of a terrorist,” he said. “You are not going to be able to reclaim that and it is going to transform the way in which we live.”

Chertoff bristled at criticism that some of the steps the United States has taken to combat terrorism — particularly the use of secret CIA prisons, the establishment of military tribunals to try terror suspects, and what critics see as a relaxing of the rules against torture — have degraded fundamental human and civil rights. He said governments must be realistic about the dangers.

“We should not sacrifice fundamental human rights, but I think it is important also not to treat every departure from the ordinary set of rules that we use in criminal cases and treat that as a catastrophic departure from fundamental human rights,” he said.