Taiwan Company Tries to Distance Itself From Pagers Used in Lebanon Attack

Gold Apollo, a Taiwanese company that American and other officials named as the supplier of pagers used in attacks in Lebanon that killed at least 11 people, sought on Wednesday to distance itself from the devices.

American and other officials briefed on the attack had said that Israel had inserted explosive material into a shipment of pagers from Gold Apollo, in an apparently coordinated operation aimed at Hezbollah.

Gold Apollo denied that it had made the pagers, pointing instead at another manufacturer that it said had made that model of pager, using Gold Apollo’s brand, as part of a licensing deal.

Explosive material that had been concealed inside a batch of the pagers detonated after they received a signal. Around 2,700 people were also injured by the attack.

But at Gold Apollo’s office on the outskirts of Taipei on Wednesday, Hsu Ching-Kuang, the company’s founder and president, said the pagers appeared to have been made by another company, B.A.C. He said he had agreed about three years ago to let B.A.C. sell its own products using the Gold Apollo label, which he said had a good reputation in the niche market.

“That product isn’t ours. They just stick on our company brand,” Mr. Hsu told journalists, adding that in return his company received a share of the profits. He said B.A.C. was based in Europe and had an office in Taipei, Taiwan’s capital.

“We only provide brand trademark authorization and have no involvement in the design or manufacturing of this product,” Gold Apollo said in a written statement. Even so, the Gold Apollo website displayed a picture of the pager model until the web page was taken down on Wednesday.

Efforts to contact B.A.C. and check Mr. Hsu’s account were not immediately successful. Nobody