RUSSIA: Russia was last night due to stage a dramatic televised announcement that it has arrested two British spies who are being interrogated by the security services, a week after its dramatic "hollow rock" spy claim, writes Chris Stephen in Moscow.
Nikolai Kovalyov, the former director of the FSB, the security service, and an MP, announced on Russian state television: "Two British spies have been arrested. Of course they are not silent, they are talking." The foreign office in London said it has no official information on the arrests, nor on whether the men are British nationals or Russians.
"We have not been notified whether it is British staff, I've got no other information," said foreign office press officer Neil Kernohan. "We'll be asking the [Russian] foreign ministry for more information."
The British embassy in Moscow said it had received no information from Russia about the arrest of any British nationals. Under long-standing diplomatic conventions, a country is obliged to inform the embassy of any foreign national arrested.
Yesterday's announcement came a week after TV footage was screened showing British diplomats manhandling a "James Bond" style hollow rock used to pass electronic data.
Russia says it is continuing to hold an unnamed 30-year-old Russian, believed to be a state official, who it says passed information to the British by downloading it into the hollow rock.
The latest announcement comes with the British government under unprecedented pressure in Russia. Last week saw investigations re-opened into tax and registration violations of the British Council office in St Petersburg.
The British Council, which provides information and library sources across Russia, was subject to a country-wide probe launched by the Russian authorities last year which ended with no allegations of impropriety.
Earlier this month a British government-funded British NGO, Centre for Peacekeeping and Community Development, which works with Chechen refugees in the Caucuses, was ordered out of the region because of registration anomalies. And last December the BBC world service, also funded by the British government, lost its licence to re-broadcast inside Russia, although Moscow has invited the BBC to submit a new application.
The common link appears to be London's foreign office, viewed with suspicion by Moscow after the revelations of the deployment of the "hollow rocks." These rocks were discovered last September by the Russians, apparently after British diplomat Marc Doe, officially second secretary at the British embassy, was followed to the spot where one of the rocks was left in a park near a petrol station.
Mr Doe is one of four embassy staff alleged to have been downloading information from the rock, but his role has been highlighted because he also signed cheques for money dispensed to a clutch of Russian NGOs.
It is these NGOs that are the focus of the current controversy. Russian president Vladimir Putin has run into international criticism after signing a new law that gives tough new power to the government to regulate NGOs.