46 US diplomats told to leave Russia by July 1
( 2001-06-21 21:15) (7)
Some 46 US diplomats who had been told to leave Russia in the heat of a spy scandal in March will quit the country by July 1, a US official in Moscow told reporters on Thursday.
"This is all part of the old scandal" sparked by the arrest earlier this year of FBI agent Robert Hanssen, who is charged with spying for the Soviet Union and Russia for at least 15 years, the US official said. Hanssen was arrested in Virginia on February 18.
Washington retaliated by expelling four Russian diplomats and pronouncing 46 others persona non grata.
In a tit-for-tat response, Moscow also expelled four US diplomats, and vowed to take further equivalent action but until the US embassy announcement Thursday no official figure had been put on the number of American personnel in Moscow to be given their marching orders.
Many of the 46 American diplomats had already started leaving Russia, Interfax quotyed US diplomatic sources as saying.
The spy row cast a chill shadow over Russian-US relations during the early months of the new American administration under President George W. Bush, who took office in January.
But optimistic observers had expressed hope after last Saturday's upbeat summit in Ljubljana that both sides would draw a line under the Bush White House's rocky start to its contacts with Russia, which have coincided with a long-running dispute over missile defence.
Washington's decision in March to expel 50 diplomats was the first large-scale blacklisting of foreign diplomats by a host country since the end of the Cold War.
Back in 1971 the British government expelled 105 members of the Soviet diplomatic missions' staff. France expelled 47 Soviet diplomats in 1983, while 80 diplomats posted by Moscow to the United States were expelled in 1986.
Around 500 staff, among them 325 diplomats, work at the US missions in Russia, including the Moscow embassy and consular offices in Saint Petersburg, Vladivostok and Yekaterinburg, according to the latest survey.
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