The Stasi connection.

Colonel Gaddafi, his lawyers and his public relations men must think Christmas comes early. If German press reports are to be believed, the case against the two Libyans accused of the Lockerbie bombing on the brink of collapse. Why? Because a new culprit has emerged: the former East German secret police, the Stasi.

"The current theory of sole Libyan involvement, although it might fit in very well with the Americans' jumbled scheme of world politics, has been shattered," declared the weekly Der Spiegel. "It is as if the indictment had been written in invisible ink and the letters have now suddenly disappeared".

It all hinges on a tiny fragment of the Lockerbie bomb's timing device, recovered from the wreckage. It was established that the fragment was part of an MST-13 type timer manufactured to Libyan specifications by a small Zurich electronics firm, Mebo AG. The company said that it had supplied this timer only to Libya.

It was by no means the only evidence linking Tripoli to the atrocity, in which 270 people died. The bomb had been packed m a suitcase full of clothes said to have been purchased in Malta by one of the indicted Libyans. The suitcase had allegedly started its journey as unaccompanied baggage on an Air Malta flight to Frankfurt. And the indictments assert that the suitcase was sent on its way by the two Libyan suspects.

The fragment from the bomb timer circuit board, however, is undoubtedly a key element in the prosecution case Mebo produced two types of circuit board for the MST-13, both of green fibreglass. One had a heat-resistant lacqeur on one side. The other did not and, as a result, had brownish colour on one side. It was an MST-13 whose circuit board was brown on one side which was found at Lockerbie. Mebo told investigators that it had supplied Libya with five such timers.

The "Stasi connection" first surfaced last summer when, Edwin Bollier, one of Mebo's two directors, suddenly remembered that he had delivered two MST-13 timers (whose circuit board lacked the heat-resistant lacqueur) to the East Germans in 1985.

The implication was that the Stasi might have passed the devices to Palestinian or other groups, which used one of them in the Lockerbie bomb.

The German police investigated Bollier's claims with vigour, but found nothing to support them. From Stasi files and from interviews with ex-Stasi officials, it was clear that Mebo and Bollier had had a long business relationship with the Stasi. A lengthy and detailed officials German report, passed to London and Washington last December, included a copy of a Mebo invoice to the Stasi dated September 1985. But this was for samsonite suitcases (not of the type enclosing the Lockerbie bomb) and for a range of electronic equipment but not MST-13 timers.

The report said, moreover, that all the items supplied to the Stasi by the Zurich company could be accounted for: somewere used in East Germany; the rest were passed to Libya.

As the German report was being digested by the Scottish and US prosecutors, Bollier took his claims a step further. Now, in this firms' archives, he had discovered an invoice to the Stasi dated September 1985. Amongst the items on the invoice were no less than seven MST-13 timers. Bollier has said that all seven lacked the heat-resistant lacqueur. In theory, the Lockerbie timer might have come from this batch.

In most quarters,the invoice,and the circumstances of its discovery, were treated with caution. Bollier, it was reflected, had maintained close links with Libya, which had even been meeting some of his expenses.

The Mebo invoice,however, has been the cornerstone of the recent German press reports, although strikingly absent has been shred of corroboration. Extracts have been published from the transcripts of interrogations of ex-Stasi officials who dealt with Bollier and Mebo. Each of these transcripts is internally consistent. But nowhere does any ex-Stasi official actually confirm having taken delivery of MST-13 type timers.

In these circumstances, there is nothing to suggest a Stasi dimension except Bollier's initial claims - which were rebutted m the December 1993 official German investigation, and his subsequently-discovered invoice, which has not been dearly authenticated.

The German press reports, moreover, do not address at all the entire body of evidence against Libya. For example, if the two Libyans are innocent, their alleged activities in Malta must be explained.

Der Spiegel has quoted Volker Rath, an official from the Hess public prosecutor's office, as saying that the Stasi connection "threatens to jeopardise the charges levelled by the Americans and the Scots."

Rath has declined to confirm that this is indeed his view. Officials from the Bunderskriminalamtes (BKA - the German equivalent of the FBI) have meanwhile dismissed the Stasi link as "speculation" The reality is that officials in London and Washington do not dismiss the possibility of a Stasi connection.

But they are adamant that they have yet to see any convincing evidence. Nothing has changed, they stress. The case against the two Libyans remains as firm today as it was when the indictments were issued in late 1991.