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.