Mysterious ‘Red Mercury’--Another Hazardous Soviet Leftover? : Contraband: Officials fear the substance is being sold to paramilitary groups. And they aren’t sure what it is.

One touch can be deadly. It is highly explosive and thought to be of Soviet military origin. According to police, it is radioactive, and scientists fear it could be remnants from a nuclear missile.

The mysterious substance known as “red mercury” has surfaced on black markets in at least two Eastern European countries, perplexing experts who have never heard of mercury that is radioactive or red.

Whether the toxic and volatile material has any application to nuclear weapons production is open to question. No one involved in its development has come forward to say what it is used for.

Further complicating a case that reads like a sci-fi thriller is the disarray plaguing the contraband’s suspected creator, the former Soviet Union. The collapse of central authority in Moscow has blurred responsibility for investigation of illegal trafficking in the hazardous substance.

Red mercury is also just one product in a frightening bazaar of dangerous commodities being stolen from Soviet military bases and traded by desperate people who don’t realize, or don’t care, what may result.

And with the threat of being associated with the spread of sensitive materials to non-nuclear powers, Eastern European authorities have little incentive to probe an underground network created to deliver what is at least a highly contaminating product to a buyer whose intentions are at least suspect.

Red mercury, feared and little understood, has become a political hot potato in a region gingerly tossing away such reminders of its sinister past. But because no one has bothered to analyze its content, it could eventually prove to be more of a red herring than a red menace.

The red mercury alarm first sounded in Czechoslovakia in October, when secret police stormed an airport cargo terminal near Ostrava. Hooded troopers tore up the premises and injured workers in an unnecessary melee. They found no containers of red mercury, which Czechoslovak press reports widely described as the point of the raid.

The bungled airport incident was the subject of virulent debate in Prague’s Parliament, and an investigation was ordered. But the scare over red mercury evaporated into suspicions of a hoax--until Bulgarian authorities announced in December that they had seized sizable quantities of the substance.

“Competent services of the Interior Ministry have recently received signals that there is illegal trade of raw materials and substances that present a danger to the life and health of people and to the environment,” a government announcement warned.

“For example, several times there have been quantities of so-called red mercury found on the black market. After consulting specialists, it became clear that this is an industrial compound of several elements with strong radioactive and toxic impact,” continued the announcement distributed over the official BTA news agency.

“In contact with skin or respiratory organs, there can be irreversible consequences to the human body, including death.”

Ministry officials would not discuss the red mercury case except to say that an investigation is continuing and to confirm the arrest of “Russian citizens” trying to arrange a recent sale in Bulgaria.

Sources speaking on condition of anonymity said that a quantity of red mercury was seized along with a missile warhead and that the sellers were asking about $180,000 a pound, suggesting that the buyer was a foreign government or a massive weapons- or drug-trafficking ring.

Bulgarian media have said that mercury compounds have applications in drug purification, as well as in the detonation and propulsion of weapons.

According to one informant, a shipment of red mercury intercepted earlier had been destined for war-torn Yugoslavia.

Sources close to the Interior Ministry probe said a Bulgarian police official was a suspect in the trafficking, a potential embarrassment at a time when Bulgaria is striving to shake off its Communist-era image as a haven for intrigue.

The official rush to report the red mercury concern in December was viewed by Western diplomats and international nuclear-safeguard agencies as an overzealous effort by some Bulgarians to show they are now playing by the rules.

“Bulgaria is very keen these days to show itself as cooperative in combatting crime and dangerous substances,” said one envoy, who added that his reporting of the red mercury scare to his superiors was met with a diplomatic shrug.

But recurring reports of the substance’s appearance in the hands of smugglers has some foreign observers and local experts concerned.

Yanko Yanev, the head of Bulgaria’s Atomic Energy Committee and a nuclear chemist by profession, has examined a seized container of red mercury and determined that it is not radioactive.

Yet the red color of the substance perplexed him and others who have examined it through a window in the container, which they say is clearly of Soviet military origin.

“They think it is an amalgam of mercury and tellurium,” said Yanev, speaking of Sofia University chemists and physicists he has consulted.

Because both mercury and tellurium isotopes are present during a nuclear explosion, Yanev worries that the red mercury may be a leftover from a Soviet missile system.

“I really regard this as a problem. It’s such a disorganized situation now (in the former Soviet Union),” Yanev said. “I don’t know what red mercury is. It could be for a missile, it could be for anything. They are selling everything on the black markets now, maybe only to get food. But you get three people together who know how (weapons development) is done, and you can have a big problem.”

In addition to the leakage of hazardous materials, the defunct Soviet Union is also hemorrhaging nuclear specialists who could be enticed into unsanctioned work by lucrative offers from rich oil-producing countries.

“There are 2,500 people in the Soviet Union who can emigrate and know everything about this,” said Jordan Harizanov, head of the Bulgarian committee’s nuclear-safeguards department.

The committee is Bulgaria’s liaison with the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, but both are responsible only for control of fissionable materials, such as uranium-235 and plutonium. Nothing matching the description of red mercury is even on the “trigger list” of hazardous substances that, under the 1972 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, governments are required to report to the IAEA within 24 hours of illegal-trafficking discoveries.

That means that neither the Bulgarian police nor the atomic energy committee is formally obligated to inform non-proliferation monitors of what they know about red mercury trafficking.

Yanev stressed that his involvement so far has been entirely unofficial. He was able to examine one container of red mercury at Sofia University, he said, only because he once taught there and has close contacts with professors and researchers in the nuclear field.

“If we have a device that is originating from the Soviet Union and really has to do with nuclear missiles, then we have to contact the producers and find out what it is and give it back to them,” Yanev said, conceding that he was unsure which authorities in the former Soviet Union should be called in.

The most prudent course of action, Yanev advised, would be to ask the IAEA to determine the composition of red mercury and to use its influence with Russia to trace the source of the substance and its intended buyer.

But he said neither Bulgarian police nor prosecutors have asked his advice, which would have to precede any formal appeal to the IAEA.

Bulgaria appears torn between rival tendencies, one arguing for an aggressive role in stemming illegal and potentially nuclear-proliferating trade and the other cautioning against playing with a booby-trapped relic of the Cold War, especially when international watchdogs have kept their distance.

Noting that the IAEA is responsible only for control of fissionable materials and that red mercury is neither fissionable nor currently listed as a proliferation substance, IAEA spokesman Hans Meyer said there were no plans to investigate the Bulgarian confiscations or the reports of trafficking in Czechoslovakia.

Czechoslovak police have confiscated red mercury after several smuggling arrests but deemed it of no strategic military value, Interior Ministry spokesman Martin Sendrych said.

To date, the seized red mercury has not even been subjected to chemical analysis to determine its content, although Bulgarian scientists say Sofia has both the expertise and the laboratory facilities to handle even a potentially explosive and contaminating substance.

One police source in Sofia speculated that the security services of the collapsed Communist empire are controlling the red mercury network, frustrating any serious effort at identifying its risks or halting its spread.