C O P E N H A G E N, Denmark, Aug. 13, 2000 -- A U.S. nuclear bomb lost more than three decades ago probably lies on the seabed off Greenland’s Thule airbase, which the United States aims to use for its controversial anti-missile shield, a Danish newspaper reported today.

Classified documents obtained by a group of former workers at Thule, an Arctic air and radar base built by the United States in 1951-52, suggest that one of four hydrogen bombs on a B-52 bomber that crashed there in 1968 was never found, the daily Jyllands-Posten said.

“Detective work by a group of former Thule workers indicates that an unexploded nuclear bomb probably still lies on the seabed off Thule,” the right-leaning mass-circulation daily said.

The crash on January 21, 1968 led to a crisis in relations between the United States and NATO ally Denmark, which is responsible for Greenland’s foreign, security and defense policy and at the time prohibited nuclear weapons on its territory, including Greenland.

Denmark was never informed about the lost bomb, which has serial number 78252, the paper said.

Film Shows Bomb-Like Object

Footage filmed at the site by a U.S. submarine searching for remains of the B-52 wreckage in April 1968 contained images of a bomb-like object, the Danish Ritzau news agency reported.

A U.S. state department document dated August 31, 1968 said all weapons onboard the crashed aircraft had been accounted for but did not spell out whether they had been recovered, Ritzau said.

The United States assured the Danish government in spring 1968 that clean-up work after the B-52 crash had been completed and gave up searching for the lost bomb in August that year, Jyllands-Posten said.

“We are not able to comment at this stage,” Lawrence Butler, Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. embassy in Copenhagen, told Reuters by telephone. Danish government officials were not available for comment.

Niels-Joergen Nehring, head of the state-sponsored Danish Institute of International Affairs (DUPI), which published a report named Greenland During the Cold War in 1997, including a chapter on the B-52 crash, said Jyllands-Posten’s claim that a lost bomb remained off Thule was not surprising.

“It is not new information that there might be some stuff left there,” Nehring told Reuters, adding the crash had occurred “some kilometers off the coast” where the water depth beneath the ice was 250 to 300 meters, or 820 to 984 feet.

The U.S. investigation of the crash site had ended once it had been confirmed that no radiation danger existed, he said.

Senior U.S. State Department officials are scheduled to visit Greenland from August 21-24 for talks with Danish and Greenland officials on Thule’s role in the planned National Missile Defense initiative.

According to Senate testimony by U.S. Defense Secretary William Cohen in July, Washington needs a decision on upgrading the Thule radar next year if the White House gives the political go-ahead to deploy the missile defense by 2005.

Home to a ballistic missile early-warning radar station, Thule sits at the midpoint of a chain of similar sites between Alaska and the British Isles — a line along which the United States may build a shield against missiles from what it calls states of concern such as North Korea, Iraq, Iran and Libya.

Greenland Politicians Oppose Plan

Leading politicians in Greenland, which has enjoyed limited self-determination under the Danish crown since 1979, do not want Thule to play any role in the missile defense.

Denmark has declined to speak out on the issue apart from saying that the missile defense should not go ahead if it breaches the strategic missile treaty between the United States and Russia. Moscow opposes the U.S. missile shield plan, and says it does breach the treaty.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has warned Denmark and other U.S. NATO allies that their participation in the missile defense could upset global strategic stability.

DUPI’s Nehring said the fresh nuclear bomb report would probably raise an uproar in the domestic media but was unlikely to seriously affect Denmark’s position on the missile defense.

“It will of course give rise to questions and debates … but I don’t think it will have any long-term impact,” he said.

The Danish government has said it will make a decision if and when Washington submits a request to upgrade the Thule radar.