Czechs to Probe Explosive That Downed Pan Am Jet

Bomb experts from Czechoslovakia are due to come to Britain next week to help establish whether Czech-made Semtex plastic explosives blew up Pan Am Flight 103, killing 270 people, the Foreign Office said Friday.

Czechoslovakia has denied Semtex was responsible but offered to send experts to join the forensic investigation, and “the British government are grateful for this offer,” the Foreign Office said.

Czechoslovakia is a major manufacturer of Semtex, but its Communist Party daily newspaper, Rude Pravo, rejected Western terrorism experts’ suppositions that Semtex blew up the Boeing 747 over Scotland on Dec. 21.

Orange-colored Semtex can be detected only by extremely sophisticated monitoring machines still undergoing tests in the United States. Britain says it has asked Czechoslovakia five times to make Semtex more easily detectable and until now has received no response.

Anti-terrorism experts and U.S. State Department officials say Syria and Libya have obtained Semtex from Czechoslovakia and passed it on to terrorists. Czechoslovakia last week denied it has been supplying explosives to terrorists.