WASHINGTON, June 22 (Xinhuanet) -- The risk of an attack with weapons of mass destruction (WMD) somewhere in the world in the next 10 years runs as high as 70 percent, a US survey of 85 nonproliferation and national security experts released Wednesday suggested.

    The survey, commissioned from late last year to early this yearby Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Richard Lugar, a Republican from Indiana, found that the estimated combined risk of a WMD attack over five years is 50 percent.

    Large majorities of the experts judged that one or two new nuclear nations would be added to the nuclear club during the next five years and that two to five would be added during the next tenyears, the survey suggested.

    "There was strong, though not universal, agreement that a nuclear attack is more likely to be carried out by a terrorist than by a government in the next ten years," according to the summary of the survey.

    "The result underscore the need to improve security around tactical nuclear weapons and nuclear material in Russia and expandour ability to detect transfers of weapons or materials from roguestates to terrorist organizations," the study said. Enditem