COPENHAGEN (Reuters) - 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 Sunday.

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 January 21, 1968 crash led to a crisis in relations between the United States and NATO ally Denmark, which is in charge of 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 the 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 on board 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. 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 that the crash had occurred ``some kilometers off the coast'' where the water depth beneath the ice was 250-300 meters.

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

Health Hazard May Cloud Nmd Talks

But a nuclear physicist who asked not to be identified told Reuters that a hydrogen bomb on the seabed, if it existed, would become a grave health hazard for people near the crash site.

Corrosion of the bomb's metal casing would sooner or later allow radioactive plutonium to seep into the sea, contaminating the shore as well as killing fish and algae, the physicist said, adding there was no risk of such a bomb exploding by itself.

Senior State Department officials are scheduled to visit Greenland on August 21 to 24 for talks with Danish and Greenland officials on Thule's role in the planned National Missile Defense (NMD) initiative.

According to Senate testimony by 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 NMD 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.

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 NMD.

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