U.S. Seeks to Bar Libya Plant Help : Has Contingency Plan for Raiding Suspected Poison Gas Complex

The Reagan Administration, asserting that Libya does not have the technical capacity to produce poison gas without foreign help, Tuesday called on all industrial nations to prevent their citizens from aiding Col. Moammar Kadafi’s controversial new plant near Tripoli.

Secretary of State George P. Shultz plans to press his call for international cooperation against Kadafi this weekend when he leads the U.S. delegation to a conference in Paris called to rejuvenate a 1925 international law against the use of poison gases.

Administration officials said Shultz will leave little doubt that Washington is determined to prevent Libya, long accused of aiding international terrorism, from producing chemical weapons. The alternative to an airtight international embargo could be American military action to destroy the facility, which the United States says is being built for the production of chemical weapons.

Libya Accuses U.S. of Lying

Kadafi maintains that the plant is intended to produce pharmaceuticals. A statement Tuesday by the official Libyan news agency, Jana, accused the United States of lying about the plant as an excuse to attack Libya and kill Kadafi.

Pentagon officials said that contingency plans have been prepared for a military strike at the plant near the desert town of Rabta, about 40 miles south of the capital, Tripoli, but officials insisted that no decision has been made for an attack. They stressed that the Defense Department intends to move cautiously.

According to one Pentagon source, Adm. William J. Crowe Jr., chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, received an intelligence briefing Tuesday about the Libyan project. The source said that Crowe questioned the briefers very closely--indicating, the source said, that the nation’s senior military officer is not yet entirely convinced that the plant is a chemical weapons facility.

“There’s going to have to be an awful lot more hard evidence,” the Pentagon source said. “The Pentagon would want to be absolutely sure that it is what people suspect it is.”

At the same time, several Pentagon officials declared that American forces in the region could destroy the chemical plant should the order be given. One official said that such an attack probably would be similar to the April, 1986, strike on two Libyan cities by Navy planes operating off the aircraft carrier Coral Sea and Air Force F-111s from British bases.

Missiles Around Plant

Another official said that cruise missile-firing submarines might be used instead to avoid anti-aircraft missiles that are known to surround the plant.

However, one U.S. official said Tuesday that Libya is taking actions to protect the factory from U.S. attack by dispersing or camouflaging some of its equipment.

The Pentagon last week dispatched to the Mediterranean a 13-ship battle group led by the aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt. Officials said that the Roosevelt and the accompanying ships, now en route, are intended to replace a carrier task force already in the Mediterranean. Although such rotations are routine, the move will have the effect of doubling the U.S. naval presence off the coast of Libya until the ships now there head for home.

Defense Department spokesman Dan Howard, questioned by reporters at the Pentagon, refused to say how long the overlap might be. Other defense officials said the carrier group could reach the Mediterranean as early as next week. But they said the ships also might conduct routine maneuvers en route and so take longer to reach their destination.

President Reagan himself last month refused to rule out an attack on the new facility. Officials denied that the dispatching of the Roosevelt had anything to do with the present Libya controversy, though reinforcing the Navy’s strength in the Mediterranean would be a logical step in preparing for possible military action, which would be unlikely before the end of the Paris conference on Jan. 11.

U.S. officials long have believed that there is less diplomatic fallout from an attack on Libya than on most other countries because the Tripoli regime has few allies and Kadafi is widely regarded as unstable. Nevertheless, most Western European nations have made it known that they would prefer a peaceful settlement of the dispute.

The Administration’s call for a technological embargo may be intended to give the Europeans a chance to make military action unnecessary.

“We have called on all countries to end any assistance that they or their firms may be providing to the Libyan CW (chemical weapons) capability,” State Department spokesman Charles Redman said. “Libya is still dependent on foreign assistance for this plant. If the assistance stopped immediately, Libya would find it difficult to begin full production and would not be able to sustain limited CW production.”

He hinted that the plant may already be producing limited quantities of poison gas, but he said that the facility is not yet ready to start full-scale production.

“Even if limited production were to begin, for example, it could not be sustained without further . . . assistance,” Redman said. “We can still have an impact if we can get at this issue.”

On the question of the plant’s purpose, Redman declared flatly that it has been built to produce chemical weapons.

W. German Firms Probed

A West German government report issued Tuesday said that five West German companies and 38 individuals are under investigation in connection with Libya, United Press International reported from Bonn. The report said that the companies apparently sent exports to Libya through Austria and France in violation of West German export controls.

However, it said that authorities have not determined if the materials were used to produce chemical weapons or pharmaceutical products.

One German company that has been cited, Imhausen-Chemie, based in southwestern Germany, has repeatedly denied involvement in the plant.

Sen. William S. Cohen (R-Me.), vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, complained that almost a dozen nations from both East and West--including West Germany--have provided assistance to Libya at various stages of the development of the plant. He made it clear that he would support military action against the facility if diplomatic efforts fail.

“This willingness to wear moral blinders, whether it be on the part of the companies which provide this expertise or the nations which condone it, is simply unacceptable,” Cohen said. “By citing the West Germans, I do not mean to suggest that they are alone or that they are displaying a greater willingness than any other nation to look the other way in the face of what is clear evidence of what the Libyans are doing. Japan has shown a similar lack of resolve, and so have the other nations whose firms have provided this assistance.

“What then can and should the United States do?” Cohen asked. “Idle threats are not the answer. We should not come to be regarded as a nation which speaks loudly but carries a small stick. At the same time, we should not act rashly or without full regard for potential consequences of whatever action we might take. All options, diplomatic, economic and military, must be fully considered.”

Robert Kupperman, a terrorism expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said that the United States seems to be lining up Soviet support for action against the Libyan plant because Moscow shares Washington’s concern that Kadafi might give poison gas to terrorists.

Also contributing to this article were Times staff writers Sara Fritz, Melissa Healy and Robin Wright.