Canada seeks man in illegal ammonium nitrate buy

TORONTO (Reuters) - Police in Canada, which is hosting two global summits later this month, said on Wednesday they were searching for a MAN (MAN.XE)who illegally purchased enough ammonium nitrate to make a large bomb.

Toronto Police Inspector Gord Sneddon said that while authorities had no reason to believe the purchase on May 26 had any connection to the summits, they were not taking any chances.

"At any time that there is a large quantity of ammonium nitrate unaccounted for, law enforcement across the country is always interested," Sneddon told a media briefing organized by the Integrated Security Unit, a special unit of local and federal police and armed forces convened for the summits.

"You don't need a lot of ammonium nitrate to build an explosive device," he said.

Canada is preparing to host the Group of Eight summit of industrialized countries and the summit of the Group of 20 rich and developing nations later this month.

Sneddon said the suspect who made the purchase falsely represented himself as making it on behalf of a local grower.

Police were alerted to the purchase by a farm supply store in southern Ontario, the province where the summits are being held. Staff became suspicious of the man who paid in cash instead of charging it to the farmer's account. Police found no connection between the suspect and the farmer.

The man was described by police as being in his 50s or 60s, with brown, unkempt hair and missing fingers on his right hand. Witnesses told police he was short, stocky and spoke in an "acute accent, possibly Mediterranean."

The summits will take place in Huntsville, a resort town in northern Ontario, and in Toronto, Canada's largest city. The Canadian government is spending about C$1 billion (687.7 million pound) on security for the summits, where the agenda will focus on the global economic crisis.

Ammonium nitrate is normally used as a high-nitrogen fertilizer for crops, including the illicit marijuana crops that appear in Ontario cornfields this time of year, and purchases must be registered to legitimate purchasers.

The material can also be used as an oxidizing agent in explosives, and ammonium nitrate-based explosives were used in the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995 that killed 168 people.

In Huntsville and Toronto, officials have started erecting 10-foot (3-metre) fences to block public access to the summits.

Last month, an anarchist group firebombed a branch of Canada's largest bank, the Royal Bank of Canada, in Ottawa, the nation's capital. The group said it would be present at the summits this month.

(Editing by Peter Cooney)