India Accuses 4 of Plotting To Bomb U.S. Consulates

The police here say they have foiled a plot to bomb American consulates in Madras and Calcutta by arresting a Bangladeshi man and three others who they say were accomplices.

American counterterrorism experts arrived here on Tuesday to investigate the case, a spokeswoman for the American Embassy said today. Officials from the embassy have interviewed the suspect, Sayed Abu Nasir, 27, who has been in Indian custody for more than a week.

No information was available on the other three men, Mohammed Gulab, Mohammed Nawab and Aga Khan, who were arrested on Monday in Siliguri, in West Bengal state.

''Obviously we're working with the police and we take it very seriously,'' said Donna Roginski, the embassy spokeswoman. ''How credible it is -- that's all being looked at.''

James P. Rubin, the State Department spokesman, said today at a briefing in Washington: ''We obviously regard with grave concern and take very seriously any threats to our personnel, both American and Indian. With respect to the question of involvement of other intelligence services, Indian authorities are continuing their investigation.''

The Indian police did not make clear who it was they thought might be behind any plots.

But United States intelligence officials in Washington, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said today that the reports from India were overblown. They also made it clear that despite some news reports, there had been no threat to the embassy in New Delhi.

The police in New Delhi said they arrested Mr. Nasir on Jan. 7 at the New Delhi railway station and charged him with waging war on India, an offense punishable by life in prison or death. He was carrying more than four pounds of RDX, an explosive, and five detonators, the police said.

The police said other accomplices remain at large: four from Egypt, two from Sudan and a Burmese.

The police said Mr. Nasir and his accomplices crossed the border between Bangladesh and West Bengal last October and traveled to Madras and Calcutta to survey the consulates there for possible attacks.

The police reported that Mr. Nasir offered them one particularly tantalizing tidbit during his interrogation: He said he had met Osama bin Laden, whom American authorities have blamed for the bombings of American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in August, at a terrorist training camp in Kunar, Afghanistan, in 1995.

But the intelligence officials in Washington said there was no known link between the arrested suspects and the bin Laden group.

The Indian police said Mr. Nasir told them that he had been associated with organizations that support terrorism, and that when he was in Afghanistan, he was picked by Pakistani intelligence officials to be their agent.

A Pakistani diplomat in New York, speaking on condition of anonymity, said his country had not been informed of the arrest and added, ''If this is a week old, why has the Pakistani Government not been informed?''

[Zameer Akram, the senior Foreign Ministry official for South Asia, said, ''Indian authorities have not informed us about any arrests and we don't have any information about the case,'' The Associated Press reported from Islamabad, Pakistan.]

Mr. Rubin said at the State Department, ''We have no knowledge of the alleged involvement of Pakistan, and I don't care to speculate on the various motives of an event that is being investigated.''

The Indian police said Mr. Nasir told them that late last year, he and several other men were sent from Bangladesh to West Bengal to blow up the American consulates in Calcutta and Madras.

The Indian police did not make clear who sent the men, and said Mr. Nasir had told them that he did not know why those targets were chosen. The men spent a month in Calcutta and then went on to Madras.

The police said that while the other men stayed in Madras, Mr. Nasir came to New Delhi to set off explosions in public places, but was arrested after he received explosives at the railway station here.