RUSSIA/BRITAIN: Russia and Britain were last night embroiled in a row over claims by Moscow that London was operating a spy ring in the Russian capital in which secret messages were retrieved from a hollowed-out rock.
Film broadcast on state television showed a person alleged to be a British diplomat walking in a Moscow park past the rock, which the FSB, successor to the KGB, said had a microprocessor embedded in it.
The processor, according to the FSB, allows a Russian traitor to download information which can later be uploaded by a British agent using a specially-adapted palm-top computer. An FSB officer told state television that the rock represented "absolutely new spy technology".
Russia claims that four British diplomats, who were not named, were involved in the spy ring, and said that a 30-year-old Russian archivist, also unnamed, had been arrested for spying.
The hollow rock now seems guaranteed a place in spying lore alongside the microdot, the cleft stick and the poisoned umbrella.
British prime minister Tony Blair made light of the issue, telling a news conference: "I only saw on teletext this morning the business about Russia. I'm afraid you are going to get the old stock-in-trade 'we never comment on security matters', except when we want to, obviously."
Russian military analyst Pavel Felgenhauer said that, whatever the truth of the hollow-rock story, Moscow was awash with spies as a result of deteriorating relations between Russia and the West. "I don't know if it's true or not, but what I do know is that intelligence-gathering activity by Western organisations is very intense," he said.
The footage comes a few days after Russia's president, Vladimir Putin, was criticised for introducing a new law which allows the state to monitor and control Russian NGOs. Moscow says that the law is needed to prevent foreign infiltration of these organisations, and this week's allegations spotlighted British support for several human rights groups.
Critics said that the measure was an attack on human rights and democracy.
The British Foreign Office said there was nothing improper about funding NGOs connected with human rights. "We are concerned and surprised at these allegations," it said. "We reject any allegation of improper conduct in our dealing with Russian NGOs."