2 Trucks With Weapons Sought by Texas Officials

Authorities searched Thursday for two trucks--one carrying four unarmed Air Force missiles and the other machine guns and mortars--that disappeared 175 miles apart in Texas, officials said.

In Washington late Thursday, President Clinton said the truck with the guns had been found.

“It’s my understanding that one of the trucks has been recovered, and the other has weapons that are inert and cannot cause any harm,” he said in response to a question after the Senate ratified the chemical weapons ban treaty.

The Texas Department of Public Safety was told by Houston police Thursday afternoon that the FBI was searching for a tractor-trailer carrying four unarmed missiles, said department spokesman Mike Cox.

The truck, with Ohio license plates, was last seen heading south on Interstate 45 near Fairfield, about 80 miles south of Dallas.

Al Tribble, an FBI spokesman in Houston, said he had no comment on the report except to say there was “no indication of any threat to the public.”

Cox said the DPS received a call about the other missing truck from a Norfolk, Va., company called Defense Tracking System. The company, which contracts with the government to track military shipments by satellite, said that truck had vanished on U.S. 290 near Hye, about 50 miles west of Austin.

The truck, occupied by a man and a woman, was carrying .50-caliber machine guns, 81-millimeter mortars and some machine gun parts, Cox said.