President Bush continues to insist, as he did this week, that the war in Iraq is a continuation of the war on terror.

Many Americans buy that idea. They believe it even though the evidence of a link between Saddam Hussein’s regime and the al-Qaida terrorist network is flimsier than the tales of weapons of mass destruction proved to be.

What is true is that the war in Iraq has increased the threat of terrorism. It has created a shooting gallery and a recruiting ground for terrorists. And it has distracted the United States from what should be its priority — preventing terrorists from getting their hands on nuclear, biological or chemical weapons.

Those are the conclusions drawn from two very important reports issued this week.

“The risks of terrorism to Westerners and Western assets in Arab countries appeared to increase after the Iraq war began in March 2003,” says the annual strategic survey by the prestigious London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies. Citing conservative intelligence estimates, al-Qaida has reconstituted itself after losing its base in Afghanistan. It now has 18,000 potential operatives based in more than 60 countries. The network’s finances are in good order.

While the war in Iraq has focused the energies and resources of al-Qaida and its followers, it has diluted the efforts of the global alliance against terrorism, the IISS concludes. It has split the United States from Europe and allowed Iran and North Korea to more freely pursue their own nuclear weapons programs.

The IISS cites evidence that Osama bin Laden and his followers hope to use nuclear or other mass destruction weapons against the United States and its close allies. This week federal counterterrorism officials told reporters that there is new intelligence indicating preparations for such a major attack this summer.

American and Russian policy-makers have stressed how hard it would be for terrorists to get their hands on a stolen nuclear weapon or to make a bomb from stolen nuclear material. But “the danger is real,” says a new Harvard report, “Securing the Bomb,” on the threat of nuclear terrorism.

“The facts are that the amount of inadequately secured bomb material in the world today is enough to make thousands of nuclear weapons; that terrorists are actively seeking to get it; and that with such material in hand, a capable and well-organized terrorist group plausibly could make, deliver and detonate at least a crude nuclear bomb capable of incinerating the heart of any major city in the world.”

The vast and poorly guarded Russian nuclear arsenal remains at the top of the worry list. But No. 2 is Pakistan, where a black market in nuclear materials and know-how was run by senior nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan.

“The threat in Pakistan is very, very high — both from nuclear insiders sympathetic to extreme Islamic causes and from the large armed remnants of al-Qaida and the Taliban that still operate in the country,” the Harvard report says.

This week, U.S. and Russian officials announced a new effort to gather up highly enriched uranium from 20 poorly protected nuclear reactors in 17 countries. But this is a relative drop in the bucket. The amount of nuclear material secured in the two years since 9-11 is less than the amount secured in the two years before the attack. Within Russia, at the current pace of securing stockpiles of nuclear materials, it would take 13 years to finish the job.

“Terrorists and thieves may not give the world the luxury of that much time,” the report warns.

That sense of urgency is absent in Washington and Moscow. There has been no “sustained presidential leadership” says report co-author Matthew Bunn. Funding for programs to secure nuclear weapons and materials is at the same level — about $1 billion a year — as in the Clinton era. When Russian President Vladimir Putin and Bush last met, the issue wasn’t even on their agenda.

So yes, Mr. President, let’s unite to fight the war on terror. Just remember where that war is really taking place.

Daniel Sneider is a columnist for the San Jose Mercury News.