Embassy bombers link denied

TWO British universities have vehemently denied teaching students how to make bombs following the jailing this week of two Palestinian former students for 20 years for plotting the 1994 bombings of the Israeli embassy and a Jewish charity in London.

Jawed Botmeh, , studied electrical engineering at Leicester University before starting a masters at Kings College, London, while accomplice Samar Alami, 30, trained as a chemical engineer at Imperial College, London.

Leicester University said: "Our engineering degrees are to educate students and turn out well-qualified engineering graduates for industry. Under no circumstances do they learn anything to do with bomb-making."

A spokesman for Kings College, where Botmeh enrolled but failed to complete an MSc, said: "There is no way he could learn to make a bomb here. We are not proud or pleased he was ever a student."

A spokeswoman for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, which in 1994 introduced a voluntary agreement with universities to vet students from certain countries wishing to research subjects which it was felt could lead to the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, said it was the moral responsibility of universities to contact the Government if they received applications from such students. Since late 1994 universities have reported 78 foreign research students.