Despite the 20 billion dollar Global Partnership unveiled at the Group of Eight summit in Canada last year to secure stocks of nuclear weapons and material, efforts still fall well short of what is needed to prevent a catastrophe, they warned.

The warnings are contained in a progress report on the initiative compiled by 21 research institutes in 16 European, Asian and North American countries known as the Strenghtening the Global Partnership project.

"When one considers the global economic, political and military consequences of a terrorist attack involving a weapon of mass destruction -- not to mention the cost in human lives -- the current spending priorities of Partnership countries can only be described as shortsighted," the report said.

Under the plan, the United States agreed to put up 10 billion dollars over 10 years, a figure to be matched by other G8 members and interested countries.

But due to wrangles with Russia over initiatives on its soil "only a small number of new projects have gotten underway since the Global Partnership was launched in June 2002," the report said.

"Only a tiny fraction of the funds pledged have been disbursed or even allocated to specific projects."

On funding, the group added : "20 billion should be considered a floor, not a ceiling."

Former US senator Sam Nunn, who now heads the Nuclear Threat Initiative, devoted to preventing terrorism with weapons of mass destruction, warned that valuable time was being lost.

"We are doing a lot of things -- but we are not moving nearly fast enough, we have a common peril and we must hold leaders to be accountable for the wise pledges they have made," he said.

"A crude nuclear explosion in one of the world's largest cities would be a human tragedy. It would shake our world economic confidence and foundation in a way that we have not experienced in the modern age."

Nunn referred to a US intelligence warning in October 2001 that terrorists had smuggled a 10 kilotonne nuclear bomb into New York City. The assessment was discredited within a week but only after it sparked alarm, weeks after the September 11 attacks.

"It was never judged by our top officials and the people who know most about this in our government as either impossible, nor implausable in New York City or anywhere else in the world," said Nunn.

Nations in the Global Partnership are the United States, Canada, Sweden, France, Germany, Italy, Norway, Russia, Japan, Britain, Switzerland plus the European Union.

WAR.WIRE