Nuclear Smuggling Arrests : ‘Triggers’ Bound for Iraq; 5 Seized After U.S.-British Probe : Indictment Comes From San Diego

Customs officials said they foiled an attempt today to smuggle 40 U.S.-made nuclear trigger components to Iraq via London.

They said five people were arrested, including an Iraqi who was picked up at Heathrow Airport and is being expelled from Britain.

The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the devices arrived from the United States two days earlier and were kept under surveillance until the alleged smugglers attempted to put them on a scheduled Iraqi Airways flight to Baghdad.

In Washington, a U.S. Customs Service spokesman, Ed Kittredge, said the arrests resulted from an 18-month investigation by U.S. and British customs officials. A sealed indictment has been returned in the case in U.S. District Court in San Diego, he said.

White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater said, “This issue raises once again our concern for the nuclear proliferation in the Middle East.” He called on nuclear suppliers “to exercise special restraint in providing materials to this region of the world, and we continue to urge that all states adhere to the Non-Proliferation Treaty,” including Iraq.

The incident could further strain relations between Britain and Iraq.

Earlier this month, Britain recalled its ambassador from Baghdad after the Iraqis hanged an Iranian-born journalist working for a British newspaper. Iraq accused the journalist, Farzad Bazoft, of spying.

BBC-TV said customs officials, tipped off by their American counterparts, removed the nuclear devices and substituted harmless replacements, then waited for the packages to be collected from their freight shed.

It showed footage of the operation which it said was shot by an NBC crew that had been following the investigation.

The Home Office said the detainees also included three Britons and a Lebanese. It said the Iraqi was being deported because of attempted breaches of British laws restricting the export of high technology.

The customs officials said the items were capacitors, electrical devices that form part of the detonation chain of a nuclear bomb.

Prof. Paul Wilkinson, a Bradford University terrorism expert, said of Iraq: “If they’re trying to smuggle in these highly sophisticated trigger devices, that means they’re very serious about making nuclear weapons and soon.”

Tony Banks, a Middle East expert at the respected Jane’s Defense Weekly, said nuclear triggers are devices for initiating an explosion in a nuclear weapon.

“This is a very, very high technology. There are only a very few countries in the world capable of manufacturing this type of technology, and there is no other use for a nuclear triggering device than to trigger a nuclear weapon,” he said.

It is not known whether Iraq has nuclear weapons capability, but it has been developing a long-range missile judged by some military analysts to be capable of delivering a nuclear warhead.