WASHINGTON, July 11: Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said in an interview released on Wednesday that the United States faced a higher risk of a terrorist attack over the summer months.

“I believe we are entering a period this summer of increased risk,” Chertoff told the Chicago Tribune.

“We’ve seen a lot more public statements from Al Qaeda. There are a lot of reasons to speculate about that but one reason that occurs to me is that they’re feeling more comfortable and raising expectations,” he said in the interview posted on the newspaper’s website.

Chertoff, referring to Al Qaeda, said that “in prior summers, we’ve had attacks against the West, which suggests that summer seems to be appealing to them.”

Chertoff said his remarks were based on past patterns of attacks, recent statements by Al Qaeda, “increased activity in South Asia” and intelligence reports.

“All these things have given me kind of a gut feeling that we are in a period of increased vulnerability,” he said.

But he said there was no evidence of an imminent plot that would require raising the current threat level for the country.

Chertoff’s comments came as a television network reported that US intelligence indicated a heightened threat from Al Qaeda.

“Senior US intelligence officials tell ABC news that new intelligence suggests a small Al Qaeda cell is on its way to the United States, or may already be here,” ABC reported on its website.

The White House had called an ‘urgent’ meeting of government agencies for Thursday afternoon to discuss the new threat, ABC reported.

Senior intelligence and law-enforcement officials would meet in the White House ‘Situation Room’ to report on steps to be taken to counter the threat and to tighten security for government buildings and personnel, it said.

Chertoff warned against complacency among the US public and said Americans had to be willing to accept a degree of inconvenience to counter terrorist threats.

“If we get into a road where everybody’s attitude is, ‘I’m interested in homeland security but not if it’s going to cost me anything, not if it’s going to inconvenience me, not if it’s going to be in my backyard,’ then we get complacency and I guarantee we will lose the race with the terrorists,” he said. “The one thing they have in abundance is fanatic devotion to their cause.”—AFP