Russia: U.S. spy plot foiled

MOSCOW, Russia -- Russia's Federal Security Bureau said on Wednesday it had uncovered a U.S. plan to steal Russian military secrets.

The spy allegations come just over a month before President Vladimir Putin and his U.S. counterpart, George W. Bush, are due to meet for a summit in Moscow and St Petersburg.

According to the Interfax news agency, CIA officials posing as U.S. diplomats tried to recruit an expert in a secret Defence Ministry plant before the FSB -- successor to the Soviet-era KGB -- stepped in.

The news agency said Russia's national security had not been jeopardised.

The classified information being sought by the CIA was about new Russian weaponry and about Russian military cooperation with ex-Soviet republics, Interfax said.

It allegedly involved trips to other countries. Inside Russia, the CIA communicated with their informer through dead letter boxes and secret messages, according to the Russian secret service.

"The FSB has irrefutable evidence of the CIA's spying activities in Russia," an FSB official was quoted as saying.

"The work was carried out by CIA officers, working under the cover of American diplomats in Moscow and in one of the CIS states," the unnamed official said.

He named a woman junior diplomat in the U.S. embassy in Moscow as leading the operation, adding that the diplomat had already left Russia.

The U.S. embassy declined to comment on the accusations. The FSB was unavailable for comment.

In March 2001, 50 Russian diplomats were expelled from the United States, prompting a tit-for-tat response from the Kremlin in the worst spy scandal to shake Moscow and Washington since the Cold War.