The Russian Foreign Ministry on Friday announced that four US Embassy officials would be expelled from Russia for activities “incompatible with diplomatic status,” a euphemism for espionage. The Russian Foreign Ministry on Friday announced that four US Embassy officials would be expelled from Russia for activities “incompatible with diplomatic status,” a euphemism for espionage.
The U.S. deputy chief of mission, John Ordway, was called to the ministry in connection with the announced expulsion of 50 Russian diplomats from Washington, the ministry press service said.A U.S. Embassy official declined to comment.The ministry also said it would take other measures to stop American officials’ “unlawful activities” in Russia, the Interfax news agency reported.Russian officials at the highest levels had been working on an appropriately “painful” response to the imminent expulsion of four Russian diplomats, and the demand that 46 others leave the United States by July.Russian officials called the U.S.

move politically driven and a throwback to the Cold War, and warned it could seriously injure wobbly relations between the former rivals.”We will easily find” U.S diplomats to be expelled “in a more painful form to the U.S. than it was in our case,” Sergei Ivanov, chief of Russia’s influential Security Council, said on Polish state television during a visit to Warsaw late Thursday.”We have time to think, to carefully pick from among more than 1,000 U.S. diplomats in Russia, to choose those who are most precious to the Americans,” he was quoted as saying through an interpreter.Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said there were no grounds for the imminent expulsion of the Russian diplomats.”Russia will firmly and steadfastly defend its national interests and will adequately respond to this unfriendly step by the United States,” Ivanov said, somberly reading a statement on government-controlled ORT television on Thursday night.Asked later on the U.S. network NBC if an “adequate” response meant an equal number of expulsions from Russia, Ivanov replied, “I think yes …

I think that you won’t have to wait long for our response.”Russia’s ITAR-Tass news agency early Friday quoted unnamed counterintelligence officers as saying the list of people to be expelled from Russia was already ready.President George W. Bush insisted Thursday the former rivals could still have “a good relationship.”Security chief Ivanov cast doubt on the claim “I cannot really believe U.S. assurances that this step can have no effect on the development of Russian-U.S relations,” he was quoted as saying.U.S. officials said four Russian diplomats had been directly implicated in the case of Robert Hanssen, a 25-year veteran of the U.S.

Federal Bureau of Investigation who was arrested last month and charged with passing secrets to Moscow for the past 15 years. Two other diplomats who were also allegedly involved in the case departed the United States recently.The U.S. government demanded the departure of 46 others as a gesture of concern over Russia’s alleged stepping-up of intelligence operations in the United States over the past four years, officials said.Moscow claims foreign intelligence agents have intensified their work in Russia, and the Federal Security Service, the main successor to the Soviet-era KGB, has called for increased vigilance.. For 85 years, Boeing has been to Seattle what holes are to Swiss cheese.