The United States ambassador to Australia has warned Australians not to become complacent about possible terrorist attacks.
Ahead of the first anniversary of the September 11 attacks on the US, ambassador Tom Schieffer said he believed Australians had not fully understood the potential for a terrorist attack.
He said he did not want to scaremonger, but suggested terrorists could want to detonate a nuclear device in Sydney Harbour.
His comments came as Prime Minister John Howard warned that all countries were vulnerable to terrorism.
Schieffer said US President George W Bush was leading the campaign against the weapons buildup in Iraq because the world could not allow such weapons to fall into the hands of terrorists.
"I think that that fact that these weapons of mass destruction are held by the Iraqis and are trying to be developed by the Iraqis should give people pause," he told a Rotary lunch in Canberra.
"Because it's not just Osama bin Laden that might want to acquire these, there's a whole host of terrorist organisations.
"No American president can be comfortable with the proposition that these weapons might be developed and then distributed to those who would detonate a nuclear device in New York harbour or Sydney Harbour, or any number of places around the world."
But Australians remained unaware of the reality of terrorism, he said.
"One of the things that I have been concerned about over the last year or so, and I don't want it to be scare mongering or whatever, but I see in Australia much of the same attitude toward terrorism that I saw in the US prior to September 11," he said.
"And basically that was that it happens in the Middle East or in happens in Northern Ireland, but it doesn't happen here.
"Well, Americans realise that it does happen in America, and I'm not sure that Australians have fully come to grips with the fact that it could happen here."
Howard said while the Taliban had been mostly destroyed in Afghanistan, he did not know if al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was still alive.
But there was no room for complacency.
"I think as the anniversary approaches people will be reminded that the central lesson out of the 11th of September is that the world was changed in that nobody is invulnerable," Howard told ABC radio.
"Even the mightiest country mankind has seen witnessed its citadels of economic and military power audaciously and successfully attacked by a group of terrorists."
© AAP
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