President-elect Barack Obama has a historic opportunity to drastically reduce the threat of nuclear terrorism and should appoint a senior White House official to take charge of countering the danger, according to an academic report released Tuesday.

Despite progress on improved security, major gaps remain, said the report prepared by Harvard University's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.

The world still faces a "very real" risk that terrorists could get a nuclear bomb and the incoming president must make reducing the threat a top priority of U.S. security and diplomacy, the report said.

"Despite all the challenges he faces, President-elect Obama cannot afford to let this sit on a back-burner," the report's author, Matthew Bunn, associate professor of public policy at the center, said in a telephone interview.

"It will take sustained White House leadership to close the dangerous gaps that still remain in our efforts to keep nuclear bombs out of terrorists' hands," he said.

This is the seventh consecutive year Bunn and the Belfer center have issued a report assessing the security of nuclear weapons and material around the world.

All were issued under the umbrella of the Nuclear Threat Initiative, a nonprofit group co-chaired by former Sen. Sam Nunn, D-Ga., and media executive Ted Turner. Some of the data in the reports were provided by the Energy Department.

Bunn plans to brief members of Congress, the Bush administration and the Obama transition team on the report in the coming weeks, as he has with past reports.

The study found that U.S.-sponsored security upgrades have been completed for about 75 percent of the buildings in the former Soviet Union that contain nuclear material that could be used to make weapons and for roughly 65 percent of Russia's nuclear warhead sites.

But there is chronic underinvestment in nuclear security there and insider theft and corruption are major issues that remain.

The report cited, for instance, the arrest of a Russian colonel earlier this year for soliciting bribes to overlook violations of nuclear security rules.

Among alarming incidents around the world, the report cited an armed break-in at a South African site containing large amounts of highly enriched uranium and increasing terrorist threats in Pakistan.

Other recommendations include launching a campaign to ensure that every nuclear warhead and every bit of plutonium and highly enriched uranium are protected against terrorists and criminals.

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