German Terrorist Probed in Embassy Bombing : Argentina: Police investigate a report that a Red Army Faction explosives expert may have entered the country.

Argentine police are investigating a report that German terrorist Andrea Martina Klump, a member of the Red Army Faction, may have entered this country days before a car bomb demolished the Israeli Embassy, killing at least 28 people.

The reports on Klump were sketchy and sometimes contradictory, but they triggered speculation Friday that she helped Muslim terrorists in the bomb plot. She is known as a specialist in explosives and is wanted by German authorities in a 1989 bombing that killed Deutsche Bank Chairman Alfred Herrhausen.

But the Federal Crimes Office in Wiesbaden, which investigates terrorism, said Friday that there is “absolutely no evidence of a possible link between the German terrorist scene” and Tuesday’s bombing in Buenos Aires. The spokesman for the Crimes Office said that Klump’s whereabouts are unknown.

Argentine officials have given credence to a statement issued in Beirut claiming responsibility for the bombing in the name of Islamic Jihad, a notorious terrorist group with ties to Hezbollah (Party of God), a pro-Iranian umbrella organization of Lebanese Shiite Muslims. The Red Army Faction is known to have some ties with Arab terrorists, but how close their connections are and whether they cooperate in attacks is unclear.

The Beirut statement said that an Argentine convert to Islam served as a suicide bomber in the Buenos Aires attack.

The death toll in the attack has climbed steadily since Tuesday as more bodies have been uncovered in the huge pile of rubble left by the explosion. Friday evening, authorities said the number of confirmed deaths had reached 28.

The newspaper El Pais in neighboring Uruguay reported early Friday that Klump’s sister was detected in Uruguay after a tip from “international intelligence services.” Unnamed intelligence sources told El Pais that the sisters joined up in Uruguay, according to the newspaper.

“They disappeared mysteriously, using false documents to cross the border with Argentina,” El Pais said.

Juan Carlos Montero, press spokesman for the Uruguayan Interior Ministry, said by telephone that police are investigating the possibility that the two women traveled to Argentina four or five days before the bombing, but he said that “Uruguayan police have not confirmed that.”

Montero identified Klump’s sister as Anegrette Klump and said a woman using that name was detected entering Uruguay. But he said that “Andrea was not seen in Uruguay. Officially she was not seen.”

He said investigators were checking with German authorities on two foreign tourists who did enter the country to see if their ages and other data might coincide with the Klumps’.

Anegrette Klump was not detained “because there was no reason for doing so,” Montero said. “Her trail was lost in Uruguay.”

Edmundo Ferretti, press spokesman for the Argentine Interior Ministry, said police here have no evidence that Andrea Klump entered Argentina.

The common denominator between Arab terrorists and the Red Army Faction is the former East Germany, which provided training and weapons for terrorist organizations through its secret police, the Stasi. The Stasi allegedly helped Libyans, for example, in the 1986 bombing of La Belle disco in West Berlin, which killed three people, two of them American soldiers. In reprisal, the United States bombed Libya.

The Stasi connection to the Red Army Faction and terrorists in general troubles German investigators because no one is certain how many former Stasi agents went underground after unification of the two Germanys. Some fear that unemployed, disenfranchised agents might sell their deadly skills and expertise to terrorist groups or join them for ideological reasons.

Andrea Klump, born in Wiesbaden in 1957, is considered one of eight to 10 hard-core members who make up the leadership of the Red Army Faction, also known as the Baader-Meinhof gang.

Klump is wanted for murder, attempted murder and membership in a terrorist organization. The Red Army Faction claimed responsibility for the 1989 slaying of Herrhausen, the Deutsche Bank chairman, who was killed when a bomb blew up his armored Mercedes-Benz limousine on the way to work.

Police reported no other clues in the murder until last November, when an informant came forward and said Red Army Faction members had used his apartment to plan the killing and his cellar to store explosives. Traces of two kinds of explosives were found in the basement, and investigators confirmed these were used in the bombing.

The informant identified Andrea Klump, whom he had met years before, as the woman who arranged the loan of the apartment, and identified her partner as another Red Army leader, Christoph Seidler, 34. He is also being sought for murder, as are two accomplices known only as Peter and Stefan. There is a 50,000-mark reward (about $31,000) out on both Seidler and Klump.

Klump is also linked to a June, 1988, bombing aimed at NATO officers at a club in Rota, Spain.

Long reported from Buenos Aires, and Jones reported from Bonn.