Federal Authorities Expect Additional Arrests in Trade Center Bombing : Probe: Bank accounts and other records may produce at least two new suspects. Meanwhile, Kahane slaying inquiry may be reopened.

Working with a list of potential suspects obtained from bank accounts and other records, federal investigators now expect that their inquiry into the World Trade Center bombing will lead to at least two--and perhaps as many as a dozen--more arrests, officials said Friday.

At the same time, federal agents acknowledged that they have not yet been able to trace the source of tens of thousands of dollars transferred from Germany into New Jersey bank accounts belonging to two men charged in connection with the bombing.

Although German bank officials disclosed that at least one of the transfer requests originated in that country, officials said it will take several days to follow the trail to the end. By tracing the funds to their source, investigators hope to learn whether the bombing was financed by an international terrorist organization.

Based on reports that the amount of money transferred could approach $100,000, U.S. government counterterrorism experts said it is possible that the bombing was an act of state-sponsored terrorism. Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea and Syria are listed by the U.S. government as countries that sponsor terrorism, and officials are reviewing whether Sudan and Pakistan should be on the list.

Three men now under arrest in connection with the bombing have been publicly identified as supporters of El Sayyid A. Nosair, who has been jailed for crimes stemming from the 1990 murder in Manhattan of Jewish right-wing leader Meir Kahane. They also are known to worship at a Jersey City, N.J., mosque where Sheik Omar Abdul Rahman, who has been accused of inciting acts of violence in Egypt, has sometimes preached.

Since last week’s arrest of Mohammed A. Salameh, 25, one of the prime suspects in the case, members of Manhattan Dist. Atty. Robert M. Morgenthau’s staff have been reviewing files in the Kahane case. Salameh attended the trial of Nosair and participated in demonstrations on his behalf. He also visited Nosair in prison.

When Salameh rented the van that federal authorities said was used in the bombing, the driver’s license that he produced bore the address of Ibrahim A. Elgabrowny, who was active in Nosair’s defense and is now also under arrest in connection with the bombing.

Elgabrowny not only raised money and organized demonstrations but also served as the principal paralegal for William Kunstler, Nosair’s defense lawyer. (Kunstler represented Elgabrowny on Thursday at a hearing to request bail.)

All of this has been of interest to the district attorney’s office, which is taking a fresh look at the case.

After Kahane was killed in 1990 in a Manhattan hotel, some information from the police investigation was turned over to the anti-terrorist task force that is now conducting the principal inquiry into the trade center bombing.

A principal focus of the district attorney’s investigation is whether Nosair, who was acquitted of murdering Kahane but convicted on lesser charges, may have been part of a larger conspiracy.

With three men already in jail, James Esposito, special FBI agent in New Jersey, said investigators have developed a working list of other suspects in the bombing, drawing from bank records, rental agreements and other documents. At least five names appeared on a rental agreement for a public storage locker in New Jersey where chemicals used in the bomb may have been mixed.

Esposito declined to disclose how many names appear on the list of potential suspects.

Asked how many more arrests are expected, a knowledgeable source told The Times: “I wouldn’t be surprised if we got two or three more. But every time we make an arrest it opens up another ring of inquiry. It wouldn’t surprise me if we eventually were to get 10 or 12 suspects.”

At a hearing in federal court in Newark, N.J., on Friday, Nidal Ayyad, 25, a chemical engineer and naturalized American of Palestinian descent who was arrested Wednesday, was denied bail by Judge Dennis Cavanaugh.

Ayyad’s lawyer, Thomas Higgins, insisted that the government has no evidence to link his client directly to the bombing. He said the evidence to date only proves that Ayyad knew Salameh.

The government has charged that Ayyad and Salameh shared the joint bank account at the Westminister National Bank in Jersey City that received transfers from Germany; that Salameh telephoned Ayyad four times on the day before the bombing, allegedly for advice on mixing the chemicals used in the explosives; and that Ayyad accompanied Salameh to rent a yellow Ryder truck believed to have carried the explosives into the sub-basement of the trade center.

Interviewed on NBC-TV’s “Today” show, Esposito said federal authorities had no doubt that Ayyad and Salameh were “major participants” in the bombing that killed five people and injured approximately 1,000 others.

The Times learned Friday that Ayyad’s car was ticketed for illegal parking once last year outside Abdul Rahman’s Jersey City mosque and once outside the building where Salameh lived.

In Germany, officials of the Westdeutschen Genossenschafts-Zentralbank in Dusseldorf acknowledged that at the behest of the U.S. Justice Department, the bank had traced the transfer of $2,420.87 from Germany to an account in the United States.

Bank spokesman Henning Hennies-Rautenberg said the transfer request originated in Germany, but “we don’t know if those transferring this amount even had an account at the bank of origin or if they simply walked in and handed the cash to a teller for transfer.”

Federal investigators said all of the transfers were smaller than $10,000, possibly to avoid detection by U.S. authorities. All transactions of $10,000 or more must be reported to the Treasury Department in Washington.

Various extremist groups from the Middle East and elsewhere have long used European countries as transit points for operatives, sites of money transfers and even foreign bases. Germany and France are at the top of the list, according to U.S. experts on terrorism.

“The Germans are very remiss on policing the corporations and banks and their misuse by terrorist groups,” one expert said. “On several incidents over the years, the trails go through Germany. The Germans have a laissez-faire attitude about these matters. They also do a lot of business with the Mideast and have a lot of guest workers.”

Times staff writers Tamara Jones in Bonn and John Goldman in New York contributed to this story.