More Bomb Parts Found as Suspect’s Cohorts Are Sought : Investigation: New explosives raise fear that other terrorist acts were planned. Officials discount connection of 4 arrests at N.Y. mosque to World Trade Center blast.

Federal agents investigating the World Trade Center explosion found more bomb-making ingredients during new searches in the New York area Friday and said that they are seeking associates of chief suspect Mohammed A. Salameh.

“There are individuals who are associates of Salameh we would like to talk to,” said James M. Fox, head of the FBI’s New York field office. “Some disappeared shortly after the blast and we are unable to locate them at this time.”

Fox confirmed that members of a joint police and FBI anti-terrorist task force had found additional explosives and other bomb parts--raising the possibility that more terrorist acts were planned.

A knowledgeable investigator said the search for additional suspects in the explosion, which killed five people and left more than 1,000 injured at the trade center on Feb. 26, has extended worldwide.

“This is a global event,” he said. “We do not feel this is a solo job. We believe Salameh had co-conspirators. When one member of a conspiracy is arrested, others may go into hiding or even flee the country.”

On Friday afternoon, the FBI arrested four men outside a Brooklyn mosque and charged them with interstate transportation of a motor vehicle allegedly stolen at Logan Airport in Boston, Fox said. Although he speculated that it was a “possibility” that they had some connection to the bombing, authorities were discounting any connection later Friday night.

Salameh, 25, a resident of Jersey City, N.J., was charged with renting the van used to carry explosives in the bombing. He was seized after vehicle identification experts traced a piece of the van’s axle recovered from the rubble of the trade center’s garage to a truck rental agency.

Salameh was arrested moments after he obtained a partial refund on the $400 deposit he placed on the van. He had claimed that the vehicle was stolen.

As FBI agents carrying search warrants raided locations in New Jersey and Brooklyn, some investigators said they think Salameh was deserted by associates who may have fled to the Middle East.

Late Friday, FBI investigators converged on a storage shed a few blocks from an apartment that Salameh used in Jersey City, looking for additional bomb parts. Disposal experts wearing armored suits removed bomb-related ingredients from the shed.

“The big question is who were the co-conspirators, if any, and what was their motivation,” Fox said, appearing on the McNeil-Lehrer NewsHour.

Also on Friday, a second man arrested in the bombing, Ibrahim A. Elgabrowny, was arraigned on obstruction of justice charges for allegedly striking agents as they attempted to search him. Later he plunged his hands into a urine-filled toilet to prevent any testing for traces of explosives, prosecutors said.

U.S. District Judge Richard Owen denied the $100,000 bail requested by Elgabrowny’s attorney, saying that Elgabrowny could “disappear into the sands of somewhere” and “he may be involved up to his eyeballs” in the blast.

At the arraignment, Assistant U.S. Atty. Henry DePippo said agents found a 9-millimeter pistol, a permit for the pistol, 150 9-millimeter bullets and two stun guns during a search of Elgabrowny’s apartment. The address of the apartment in Brooklyn was the one used by Salameh when he obtained his driver’s license.

Elgabrowny is a cousin of El Sayyid Nosair, who was convicted of a weapons charge in the 1990 assassination of radical Rabbi Meir Kahane in New York City. Nosair is serving a 22-year sentence in New York’s Attica Prison. Authorities said their search of the apartment also turned up five fraudulent passports in the names of Nosair, his wife and their three children.

Meanwhile on Friday, FBI Director William S. Sessions toured the bomb scene--a huge crater still surrounded by a dangerous spaghetti of twisted wreckage. A week after the explosion, bomb experts still have been unable to reach the site of the bomb explosion because it is too unstable.

Sessions, referring to investigative theories that the bombing is a conspiracy, pledged: “We will find the dimensions of whatever the organization or the group is.”

In Washington, President Clinton also touched on the belief that Salameh may not have acted alone.

“When I know who was behind this and what happened, I will then determine what the appropriate course is for the United States,” the President said.

In Brooklyn, members of Kahane Chai, a group of Kahane supporters, made public two photographs that also appeared to link Salameh and Elgabrowny with an effort to win freedom for Nosair.

A spokesman for Kahane Chai said one photo showed Salameh demonstrating outside the federal court in Manhattan, apparently on the day Nosair was sentenced to prison. It also showed people in the crowd carrying signs reading, “Nosair is a family man.”

The spokesman claimed that a second photo showed Elgabrowny protesting outside the home of the judge in the Kahane murder trial on Jan. 26, 1992.

There was a brief flurry of excitement late Friday when an FBI official announced the arrests of the four men near the mosque in Brooklyn. At first it appeared that the men might be linked to the trade center bombing but officials later discounted that possibility.

The arrests were made by police officers staking out the mosque in connection with the bomb investigation.

The chairman of the House Judiciary subcommittee that oversees the FBI said Friday that he does not see “the World Trade Center bombing as a harbinger of more terrorism on U.S. soil.”

Rep. Don Edwards (D-San Jose), chairman of the subcommittee on civil and constitutional rights, said that it would be a “tragic mistake” to use the bombing as a “reason for cutting back on civil liberties.”

Sheik Omar Abdul Rahman, the militant Muslim who preached at the Jersey City mosque where Salameh is believed to have worshiped, issued a statement Friday condemning the explosion.

“Islam is opposed to the destruction of life and property of the innocent. The bombing of the World Trade Center could not have been by a true Muslim,” it said.

Port Authority officials said Friday that they are re-examining the trade center’s security and life-safety systems to determine if they might be improved.

In the past, the agency rejected suggestions that it ban public parking in the complex’s basement.

“We felt, at least up till now, that it doesn’t make sense,” said Anthony Shorris, first deputy executive director. “That’s clearly an area of vulnerability.” But he added: “We’ve got to make sure that the actions we take make sense in terms of maximizing security as well as being able to run the facility.”

At 12:18 p.m., exactly one week after the blast, the alarm on the wristwatch of another port official went off. Charles Maikish, executive director of the trade center, excused himself from reporters and moved to a nearby window.

There he stood, as snow began to fall heavily on the crippled complex and nearby streets still clogged with police barricades, trucks and contracting crews.

Maikish said he was observing a private moment of silence.

Times staff writers Ronald J. Ostrow, Janny Scott and Gebe Martinez contributed to this story.