MOSCOW, May 6 -- Russian security officials announced Monday they have arrested a Russian citizen suspected of spying for Britain and said the Foreign Ministry will expel several British diplomats believed to be using the embassy in Moscow as a cover for espionage activities. In a brief written statement, the Federal Security Service said an 'agent of the English SIS intelligence service' was 'caught red- handed' while communicating with a contact. It did not specify when or where the suspected agent was detained. The statement said the alleged spy had 'espionage equipment' on his person at the time of the arrest, and that he confessed to having a 'criminal relationship' with British intelligence. The statement gave a detailed account of his recruitment by and cooperation with British spy bodies. Russian news agencies cited unnamed sources in security organs as saying the suspected spy was arrested last month after a few years working with British intelligence. They described him as a young man who worked in a government body and had access to restricted political and defense-related information, and that his motivation was purely financial. In a move that Russian security officials indicated was based on information from the suspect, the state-run Itar-Tass news agency said the Foreign Ministry lodged a 'decisive protest' with the British ambassador, Sir Andrew Wood, overthe use of the British Embassy as a cover for broad-based espionage. Moscow will expel several 'English staff spies, who under the cover of diplomatic positions at the embassy of Great Britain in the Russian Federation maintained links with the exposed agent,' Federal Security Service spokesman Alexander Zdanovich told the Interfax news agency.
Zdanovich said the Foreign Ministry informed Wood that 'for actions incompatible with diplomatic status, a number of English spies have been declared persona non grata and are being expelled from Russia.' Officials at the British Embassy in Moscow declined to comment on the situation, but a Foreign Office spokesman in London delivered a blanket denial, saying: 'The allegations we've seen in the media are completely unjustified.' Shortly after British Prime Minister John Major met with his foreign secretary, Malcolm Rifkind, the Foreign Office issued an additional statement warning that it will make an 'approriate response' if Russia carries out its threat to expel diplomats. Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Krylov told Interfax he had discussed the arrest of the suspected spy and the expulsion of British embassy employees with Wood, but declined to say how many Britons would be required to leave. The Foreign Ministry broke with its common practice by failing to issue an official statement on the matter, possibly indicating plans to declare suspected intelligence agents persona non grata and expel them had not been fully developed. The statement from the Russian Federal Security Service, the domestic offshoot of the former Soviet KGB, did not indicate how the accused spy would be punished. Espionage is punishable by imprisonment or death in Russia. The situation appeared likely to develop into the most serious spy scandal involving Moscow and London since 1989, when Britain expelled 11 alleged Soviet spies and the Kremlin retaliated by ousting 11 British diplomats and journalists. Last January a British parliamentary committee found the MI6, the branch of the SIS responsible for foreign intelligence, had reduced its activity in Russia since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
