W. German Aid in Libya Air-Refueling Reported

A West German firm is helping Libya to develop the technique for air-to-air refueling of its jet fighter-bombers to give them enough range to reach Israel, a national newsmagazine reported Sunday. An official of the firm denied the report.

Der Spiegel, edited in Hamburg, identified the West German company as a Bavarian firm called Intec, operating under the cover of a sister-firm in Liechtenstein, CTTL.

The newsmagazine said that German employees of the firm, technicians who had formerly worked for the Dornier aircraft company, are being paid through a Swiss bank.

The technicians, Der Spiegel reported, are equipping American-made C-130 Hercules transports in the Libyan air force with an in-flight capability to refuel Libya’s French-made Mirage fighter-bombers and Soviet MIG-23s.

Could Reach Israel

The refueling operation would extend the range of Libyan fighter-bombers to include Israel, as well as other Mediterranean countries, the report said.

U.S. intelligence sources had said earlier that a West German company, which they did not name, had been helping Libya convert C-130s into air tankers.

Der Spiegel also said that the Libyans are converting a Boeing 707 jet into an aerial transport. The U.S. Air Force has dozens of these, known as KC-135s.

Ingo Mohring, deputy head of Intec, said Sunday that “our firm has nothing to do with equipping or re-equipping Libyan aircraft,” according to Deutsche Presse-Agentur, the West German news agency.

And Friedhelm Ost, the chief Bonn government spokesman, told the newspaper Bild am Sonntag that Intec in 1986-88 had supplied Libya with parts to build two transportable fuel tanks--but they were suitable only for operation on the ground.

No In-Flight Refueling

“They could be loaded aboard aircraft such as a Hercules,” Ost was quoted as saying, “but they could not be used for in-flight refueling.”

Der Spiegel also reported Sunday that Bonn officials had received hard information about the involvement of West German companies in the design and construction of a suspected Libyan chemical weapons plant in 1986--not in late 1988, as the government admitted last week.

Libya asserts that the plant, 40 miles southwest of the Libyan capital of Tripoli, is intended to manufacture only pharmaceuticals. But Washington insists that it is designed to be the Third World’s largest producer of poison gas and other elements of chemical warfare.

Der Spiegel said that “several times” the Federal Intelligence Service had “urgently” and “concretely” provided evidence of the participantion in the chemical project by West German companies.

“The federal government did not take reports by the German and American secret services seriously,” said the magazine.