Moscow: CIA Spy Try Foiled

Russia's Federal Security Bureau said on Wednesday it had uncovered a U.S. plan to steal Russian military secrets, Interfax news agency reported.

CIA officials posing as U.S. diplomats tried to recruit an expert in a secret Defense Ministry plant before the FSB intervened, the agency said.

"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.

The security service interfered at an early stage and was able to monitor the CIA officers' activities and prevent serious damage to Russia's security, the spokesman said.

He named a 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, which come just over a month before President Vladimir Putin and his U.S. counterpart, George W. Bush, are due to meet in Moscow and St Petersburg.

The FSB, the main successor to the Soviet-era KGB, 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.