U.S., British downplay French foreign minister's comment on mail bombs

PARIS -- American and British officials moved quickly Thursday to downplay the French foreign minister's comment that one of two mail bombs sent from Yemen last week was disarmed just 17 minutes before it was set to go off.

The issue of timing is central to the investigation because it could indicate whether terrorists hoped to blow up the planes over U.S. airspace or whether they simply wanted to take down the planes regardless of their location.

"One of the packages was defused only 17 minutes before the moment that it was set to explode," French Interior Minister Brice Hortefeux told state-run France-2 television. He made no other comment on the Yemen mail bomb plot in the interview and was not available afterward.

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said the question of when the bombs found in Britain and the United Arab Emirates were to go off was still under investigation and there was no information confirming such a close call.

U.S. State Department counterterror coordinator Daniel Benjamin also questioned the French minister's comments.

"This is not our understanding of the situation. Our understanding is the investigators are still looking at the fusing and the timing of a possible detonation so I can't confirm that right now," he told reporters in Rotterdam.

A government official in Britain said the device found there was still undergoing forensic tests and it had not been determined how close it was to being detonated. A security source in the United Arab Emirates said Hortefeux's remark did not describe the bomb found in that country.

"If this was a reference to the device found in the Federal Express site in Dubai, then it is not correct," a security source in the United Arab Emirates who is familiar with the investigation said.

Neither was authorized to discuss the case publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

Hortefeux did not say where he got the information about the timing, although U.S. and European intelligence officials have been exchanging information on the plot. The French Interior Ministry would not elaborate on Hortefeux's comment.

Sweden, meanwhile, changed its travel recommendations for Yemen, advising citizens on Thursday to refrain "from all travel to Yemen until further notice." The foreign ministry cited conflicts in Yemen's north, unrest and kidnappings in the south and "repeated terror actions against foreigners and foreign interests."

When investigators pulled the Chicago-bound packages off cargo planes in England and the United Arab Emirates last Friday, they found the bombs wired to cell phones and hidden in the toner cartridges of computer printers. The communication cards had been removed and the phones could not receive calls, officials said, making it likely the terrorists intended the alarm or timer functions to detonate the bombs.

The bomb found at East Midlands airport in central England went unnoticed for several hours.

Intelligence officials in the U.S. said Wednesday that each bomb was attached to a syringe containing lead azide, a chemical initiator that would have detonated PETN explosives packed into each printer cartridge.

Both PETN and a syringe were used in the failed Christmas bombing of a Detroit-bound airliner.

Investigators have focused on the Yemeni al-Qaida faction's top bomb maker, who had previously designed a bomb that failed to go off on a crowded U.S.-bound plane last Christmas.

This time, authorities believe master bomb maker Ibrahim al-Asiri packed four times as much explosives into the bombs hidden last week on flights from Yemen. The two bombs contained 300 and 400 grams of the industrial explosive PETN, according to a German security official, who briefed reporters Monday on condition of anonymity in line with department guidelines.

By comparison, the bomb stuffed into a terrorist suspect's underwear on the Detroit-bound plane last Christmas contained about 80 grams.

One of the explosive devices found inside a shipped printer cartridge in Dubai had flown on two airlines before it was seized, first on a Qatar Airways Airbus A320 jet to Doha and then on an as-yet-undisclosed flight from Doha to Dubai. The number of passengers on the flights were unknown, but the first flight had a 144-seat capacity and the second would have moved on a variety of planes with seating ranging from 144 to 335 people.

The packages were addressed to two Chicago-area synagogues. But because the addresses were out of date and the names on the packages included references to the Crusades -- the 200-year wars waged by Christians largely against Muslims -- officials do not believe the synagogues were the targets.

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Murphy contributed from Dubai, United Arab Emirates; Paisley Dodds in London, Matt Apuzzo in Washington and Michael Corder in Amsterdam also contributed to this report.