U.S. intelligence report predicts threats to 2015

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- As President-elect George W. Bush prepares to take office, a new intelligence report Monday predicted more sophisticated "terrorist" tactics and a growing threat of missile attack in the next 15 years.

"Between now and 2015 terrorist tactics will become increasingly sophisticated and designed to achieve mass casualties," said the unclassified report, "Global Trends 2015: A Dialogue About the Future With Nongovernment Experts."

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"We expect the trend toward greater lethality in terrorist attacks to continue," the report said.

The intelligence community and outside experts teamed up to produce the report which said the threat of "terrorism" sponsored by hostile countries was likely to diminish over 15 years, while the threat from independent operators was likely to increase.

"The trend away from state-supported political terrorism and toward more diverse, free-wheeling, transnational networks -- enabled by information technology -- will continue," the report said.

"Some of the states that actively sponsor terrorism or terrorist groups today may decrease or even cease their support by 2015 as a result of regime changes," the report said.

State-sponsored terrorism was expected to decline partly because Iran, North Korea and Cuba had a significant chance for regime changes by 2015, John Gannon, chairman of the National Intelligence Council which compiled the report, said.

Decisions to deal with the national security environment that may emerge in 15 years would have to be made now by the new administration, he told Reuters in a telephone interview.

Most immediate threat

"The most immediate threat is the weapons of mass destruction," Gannon said, referring to chemical or biological weapons. "There's a growing threat from the small adversary or the non-state actor or the terrorist group in terms of weapons of mass destruction capability," he said.

The potential for "terrorist" groups to use chemical, biological or radiological weapons increases, Gannon said.

"In the information environment we're in they're going to have greater access to general information, to specific technologies on how to build bombs, to finance across borders ... and they're going to be able to cover up what they do more efficiently in this kind of environment," he said.

"They are probably more likely to actually use these weapons than organized states," he added.

The United States was shaken by the October 12 attack on the USS Cole in Yemen in which a small boat exploded alongside the warship, killing 17 U.S. sailors.

U.S. investigators have been trying to determine whether the attack had ties to Saudi-exile Osama bin Laden, whom the United States has blamed for allegedly masterminding the bombing of two U.S. embassies in East Africa in 1998.

"Middle East and Southwest Asian-based terrorists are the most likely to threaten the United States," the report said.

Predicts Palestinian state

The report predicted establishment of a Palestinian state by 2015 and that Israel would have attained "a cold peace" with its neighbors with limited social, economic and cultural ties.

Changing military capabilities would be among the key factors that would determine the risk of war, it said.

In South Asia, for example, "that risk will remain fairly high over the next 15 years," the report said. India and Pakistan are "both prone to miscalculation," it said, and both would continue to build their nuclear and missile forces.

The total Russian force by 2015 would probably be below 2,500 nuclear warheads, the report said.

China by 2015 will have deployed tens to several tens of missiles with nuclear warheads targeted against the United States, and hundreds of shorter-range ballistic and cruise missiles for use in regional conflicts, the report said.

"A unified Korea with a significant U.S. military presence may become a regional military power," the report said.

Without unification, North Korea could cloud regional stability, it said. North Korea probably has one, possibly two, nuclear weapons, and it could have "a few to several" intercontinental ballistic missiles deployed by 2005, the report said.

Iran could test an intercontinental ballistic missile as early as 2001, and Iraq could test one capable of delivering a nuclear weapon to the United States before 2015, the report said.

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