U.S. Accuses Iraq in A-Trigger Plot : Smuggling: Officials say that Baghdad undoubtedly intended 40 devices seized in London for nuclear arms.

U.S. authorities accused the Iraqi government Thursday of masterminding an elaborate plot to smuggle electronic devices from California to Baghdad for eventual use in detonating nuclear weapons.

Unsealing an indictment by a federal grand jury in San Diego against five alleged agents of the government in Baghdad, officials said they hope to extradite for prosecution in the United States the plot’s alleged ringleader, Ali Ashour Daghir, and possibly other participants.

Separately, Daghir and two accomplices were charged Thursday in an Uxbridge Magistrates Court in West London with violating British export laws. Both U.S. and British officials reiterated their concerns about the proliferation of nuclear weapons in the Mideast.

“This is probably the biggest case the Customs Service has ever had,” said U.S. Customs Commissioner Carol Hallett. “It was a very frightening situation.”

As new details of the 18-month sting operation emerged on both sides of the Atlantic, Iraqi officials vehemently denounced the U.S. and British actions. President Saddam Hussein told a Baghdad rally that the nation’s enemies are trying to hinder Iraq’s “march of progress.”

The official Iraqi news agency INA said the acting head of the British Embassy in Baghdad was summoned to the Foreign Ministry and told by Undersecretary Nizar Hamdoon that “Iraq did not violate the laws of Britain or any other country.” INA said a Foreign Ministry spokesman “denied categorically, chapter and verse, allegations contained in a statement by the British authorities on Wednesday.”

In Washington, senior Customs agent John C. Kelley said there is no doubt that the Iraqis had intended to use the U.S.-made devices, called capacitors, to help set off nuclear weapons.

Appearing with Hallett at a press conference, Kelley said: “Based on their specifications . . . it left nothing to the imagination . . . as to what the purpose would be.”

The indictment, which charged the defendants with five counts of conspiracy to export defense articles, said they represented two firms that “acted as agents for the Republic of Iraq in the procurement of defense articles, military equipment and munitions items.”

In addition, the indictment said the devices were sought by the defendants “on behalf of Al Qaqaa State Establishment, a division of the Ministry of Industry and Military Industrialization of the Republic of Iraq.”

Portions of the indictment contained extensive excerpts from conversations that appeared to have been surreptitiously recorded, a fact that officials reluctantly confirmed.

“The tapes will be presented in court in San Diego,” Kelley said.

The legal status of the five suspects remained unclear Thursday.

Authorities were unable to resolve whether any of them can be extradited from Britain to the United States under a bilateral treaty. The issue is still “under review,” said Dan Eramian, a U.S. Justice Department spokesman in Washington.

According to the indictment, the plot’s mastermind was Daghir, 49, a dual Iraqi-British citizen who ran an Iraqi government purchasing office from a London suburb. The firm posed as a food export company called Euromac (London) Ltd.

The other suspects named in the indictment are Jeanine Celestine Speckman, 41, a Euromac executive; and three engineers: Karim Dhaidas Omran, Wallid Issa Ahmad and Dafir Al-Azawi. The three engineers are believed to be in Iraq.

“I’m sure that in the case of those who are currently in Great Britain there will be an effort--at least discussions with respect to extraditing them,” Hallett said. “But for those who are in Iraq, obviously there is little likelihood that we will see them here in the United States.”

In the London court proceeding, a magistrate ordered Daghir held without bail pending a court hearing April 5. The magistrate released Speckman on bail and ordered a court appearance on May 10.

The magistrate ordered another alleged Daghir accomplice, Toufic Fouad Amyuni, held without bail. U.S. officials said that Amyuni was not involved in the U.S. case.

In addition, the British Home Office ordered the deportation of Omar Latif, described as the station manager at Heathrow Airport for Iraqi Airlines.

Still another suspect, a Cypriot with a British passport, was released after questioning Wednesday.

The international sting operation was set in motion in September, 1988, when Daghir approached a San Marcos, Calif., firm, CSI Technologies Inc., seeking to buy custom-made, high-voltage capacitors, according to the indictment and information provided by U.S. officials.

The request quickly aroused the suspicion of CSI President Jerold D. Kowalsky, who alerted Customs officials and agreed to play an important part in the sting.

The capacitors allegedly sought by the Iraqis are electric energy storage devices designed to quickly discharge about 5,000 volts of electricity into a trigger in order to detonate a nuclear missile warhead.

After further contacts were made with the Iraqis, Hallett said, Customs agents learned that “Euromac is an official purchasing office of the Iraqi government which had done millions of dollars of business in procuring military materiel for the Iraqi government during the Iran-Iraq conflict.”

By May, 1989, Euromac officials had disclosed to Kowalsky and a Customs undercover agent, Daniel Supnick, that the devices were destined for Al Qaqaa State Establishment, a part of the Iraqi Ministry of Industry and Military Industrialization, Hallett said.

Additional investigations by Customs agents confirmed that Al Qaqaa is a facility involved in the development of missiles and rockets and explosives research and development for the Iraqi government, she added.

During the negotiations between Daghir and CSI, the Iraqis also expressed an interest in acquiring another type of sophisticated device called krytrons, which serve as actual triggers for nuclear bombs.

As a result, Customs agents persuaded the sole domestic manufacturer of krytrons, EG&G; of Wellesley, Mass., to participate in the sting operation.

The firm provided Customs with 40 inoperable devices, but agent Kelley said that the plot never progressed to a stage that called for use of the phony triggers.

Instead, Euromac, which later changed its name to Atlas Equipment (U.K.) Ltd., paid $10,000 for 100 capacitors. CSI earlier this month shipped 40 to London’s Heathrow Airport, by way of the Los Angeles International Airport.

The shipment was closely monitored by U.S. and British officials throughout the journey, officials said.

When it reached a cargo hangar at Heathrow, British officials substituted dummy capacitors as a precaution. Several days elapsed before the Iraqis moved to load the crate, labeled as containing air-conditioning units, onto an Iraqi Airways jet bound for Baghdad.

Authorities then moved in.

If convicted, each person named in the San Diego indictments faces up to five years in prison and a maximum fine of $250,000. The firms face a maximum fine of $1 million.

At the State Department in Washington, spokesman Richard Boucher carefully avoided any direct criticism of Iraq, while denying that the Bush Administration is letting the Iraqis off the hook.

Boucher reiterated the Administration’s concern about nuclear proliferation, but he did not accuse Iraq of violating the Non-Proliferation Treaty, of which it is a signatory, or of trying to develop a nuclear weapon.

“We do not foresee a near-term Iraqi nuclear weapons capability,” Boucher said. “However, we remain concerned about the danger that Iraq may seek to develop a nuclear weapons option in the future.”

Asked if the incident will have an impact on U.S.-Iraqi relations, Boucher said, “I don’t have any conclusions as to that. I said we’ll examine the information from this case very carefully, and we’re raising at this point our concerns with the Iraqis both here and in Baghdad.”

The State Department called in Iraq’s ambassador, Mohammed Mashat, to register U.S. concerns about the case.

In London, the Iraqi plot sparked a lively debate in the House of Commons, with Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher calling it a “very, very serious incident.”

Sounding a similar note struck by President Bush on Wednesday, Thatcher said Britain is now “urgently contacting” the signatories of the Non-Proliferation Treaty and related agreements “to see what we can do . . . (so) there is no repeat of this. . . .”

Also in the House of Commons, the opposition Labor Party’s shadow foreign secretary, Gerald Kaufman, demanded that Britain expel Baghdad’s ambassador and break off diplomatic relations in retaliation.

But Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd rejected that course, noting that two Britons are being held prisoner in Iraq.

“I can see considerable risk and damage by breaking off diplomatic relations . . . and no actual advantage,” he said. “I do not want to get into a position where we not only leave our citizens, including our two prisoners, without protection, but we also get in a position where we don’t actually have an embassy in the Middle East between the Khyber Pass and the Mediterranean.”

Britain is said to be Iraq’s third-largest trading partner, and about 2,000 British citizens live in Iraq. Despite pleas for clemency from the British government, Iraq executed a British journalist of Iranian birth earlier this month after convicting him of espionage.

This story was reported by Edwin Chen, Norman Kempster and Ronald J. Ostrow in Washington; Alan Abrahamson and Chris Kraul in San Diego, and Dan Fisher in London.