Five years after the US started its global "war on terror" following the September 11 attacks, the anti-terrorism situation is getting worse, the US Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said on Thursday.

 

"That's even getting worse.... The stakes are increasingly becoming higher and higher as the technology increases," Chertoff told a panel discussion on the comprehensive response to terrorism hosted by the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

 

Chertoff said that in the 21st century, even a single individual is able to use high-tech tools, such as weapons of mass destruction (WMDs), in a way to cause a type and magnitude of destruction that would have been unthinkable a century ago.

 

The stakes are so high that stronger enforcement of the international non-proliferation regime is needed, Chertoff said, emphasizing the aim is to prevent WMDs falling into hands of the irresponsible.

 

"I think the issue becomes not necessarily creating a bureaucratic structure ... but in some points exerting the will to impose consequences on those state actors or non-state actors who are not going to comply with the rules," Chertoff said.

 

(Xinhua News Agency January 26, 2007)