Britain Seizes Huge Gun Barrel Near Iraqi Ship

British customs officers said Wednesday that they found a huge gun barrel, capable of firing nuclear and chemical shells, waiting to be loaded onto an Iraqi-chartered ship.

The discovery of the gun came two weeks after 40 nuclear trigger devices bound for Iraq were seized at London’s Heathrow Airport. But a customs spokesman said there was no connection between the two investigations.

The gun barrel, reported by Britain’s Press Assn. news agency to be 130 feet long, was found during a search of a dock in Middlesbrough in northeastern England. Arms experts said such a gun could fire shells into the heart of Israel or Iran.

The Iraqi news agency, monitored in London, denied that the seized equipment was for military purposes. It quoted a “senior Iraqi source” as saying the hardware consisted of steel pipes for a petrochemical project.

Iraq is widely thought to be developing nuclear weaponry although it denies it. Recently, President Saddam Hussein said Iraq has highly advanced chemical weapons, and he threatened to destroy half of Israel if it launched an attack.

There were no arrests in connection with the gun shipment, but officers seized documents from two British companies thought to be involved in the gun’s manufacture.

The Press Assn. quoted customs officials as saying the gun barrel was in pieces packed in eight cases. The cases were reportedly found on the dockside waiting to be loaded onto a Bermuda-registered ship on charter to the Iraqi Maritime Organization.

“We are considering the possibility that the gun was made to order in Britain for the Iraqis,” a customs spokesman said. The spokesman refused to identify the two firms that were searched in connection with the gun.

Ballistics experts said a gun with a 130-foot-long barrel would be able to fire a projectile several hundred miles.

“It is capable of firing a nuclear shell which could easily hit Iran or any other Middle East trouble spot from Iraq,” the customs spokesman said. “It is certainly the biggest gun barrel we have ever uncovered in this country.”

Also on Wednesday, NBC News, citing U.S. intelligence sources, said Iraq has developed deadly biological weapons, including those that induce anthrax, typhoid and cholera and that it has a germ warfare laboratory south of Baghdad.

The NBC News report also said the Centers for Disease Control, a U.S. agency based in Atlanta, unwittingly added to Iraq’s stockpile of viruses in 1985 when it sent three shipments of West Nile Fever virus to researchers in Iraq.