Britain OKd a Delivery of Disputed Pipes, Firm Says : Military: London is still investigating whether items seized en route to Iraq are for a ‘super gun’ or a petrochemical project.

A British company said Friday that it previously delivered to Iraq 44 of the steel cylinders of the type that Britain seized this week on grounds that Iraq could use them to build a “super gun.”

The company said it had delivered the cylinders with government permission--and had made a video about it. It repeated that they were pipes to be used in a petrochemical project.

Iraq has also denied that the cylinders are designed for weapons use.

However, military experts said the eight cylinders found by British customs Wednesday might be used to build a huge gun with a 130-foot-long barrel, enabling Iraq to fire nuclear or chemical shells into Israeli or Iranian cities.

In Bermuda, where British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher met Friday with President Bush, she told reporters that her investigators have not decided what to make of the tubing.

“The experts are still considering and confirming as to whether it is a gun or simply large steel piping,” she said. “They have not yet made up their minds if it is a gun.”

The pipes were put on public display at the northern English port of Middlesbrough, where they were seized before they could be loaded onto an Iraqi-commissioned ship.

The company that made the cylinders, Sheffield Forgemasters, said in a statement that it had full Department of Trade and Industry permission for the Iraqi order.

The statement also said the pipes, when assembled, would be 512 feet long, not 130 feet.

Television news programs ran clips from a promotional video by Forgemasters recording the manufacture of the cylinders.

“Companies seeking to export products illegally do not make a complete record of their illicit operation on video nor do they use that self-same video for promotional purposes,” said company spokesman Tony Peck.

He described as absurd and far-fetched allegations that the pipes could be used to make the barrel of a huge gun.

The Independent newspaper of London said some arms experts are also skeptical that such a gun would work, given the ratio of length to its barrel weight of 140 tons.

But Terry Gander, with the Jane’s Armor and Artillery publication, said the tubes matched specifications for a huge gun designed by the late Gerald Bull, who was chief of the Space Research Corp. and an authority on long-range, high-caliber artillery.

“There you can see all the various sections, exactly as was found” at the dock, Gander said, pointing to a manual co-written by Bull, a Canadian.

Bull was found dead in his apartment in Belgium last month with five bullets in his head and back.