Russia has angrily rejected allegations by Washington that it had cracked an undercover Russian spy ring, but US officials said the Cold War-style cloak and dagger saga would not undermine a thaw in relations.Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin said US police who arrested 10 suspected spies in four cities in the eastern US on Sunday had gone "out of control".
"I hope that all the positive gains that have been achieved in our relationship will not be damaged by the recent event," Mr Putin told visiting ex-US president Bill Clinton in Moscow.
Russia's foreign ministry has called the allegations baseless and improper, and the country's foreign minister Sergei Lavrov has questioned the timing of the charges.
"We have not had an explanation of what this is all about, and I hope that we will receive one," he said.
The arrests for alleged spying came only hours after Russian president Dmitry Medvedev left the G20 summit in Canada, and the White House has confirmed that US president Barack Obama knew about the FBI operation when he met Mr Medvedev for talks last week.
Russia's government says all of those arrested for espionage are Russian citizens and the charges against them are baseless.
| "Lies! All lies!" |
An 11th suspect was arrested in Cyprus on Tuesday and freed on bail, police on the Mediterranean island said.
In Washington, administration officials said the case would not set back Mr Obama's drive to "reset" ties with Russia, one of the signature diplomatic initiatives of his administration.
"I think we have made a new start to working together on things like in the United Nations dealing with North Korea and Iran," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said. "I do not think that this will affect those relations."
The suspects, some of whom lived quiet lives in American suburbia for years, were accused of gathering information ranging from data on high-penetration nuclear warhead research programs to background on CIA job applicants.
Details emerged about the accused individuals, with much of the focus on a Russian woman called Anna Chapman. While other suspects blended seamlessly and quietly into suburban American society, like Richard and Cynthia Murphy in Montclair, New Jersey, Chapman was a high-flying New Yorker with a multi-million-dollar real estate business.
According to the charge sheet, Chapman had been leading a double life as a spy since January, going to coffee shops and transferring sensitive information to her Russian handler via her laptop to his passing van.
A Peruvian journalist who has worked in New York for 20 years and is notorious for a kidnap scandal in Peru was also among the 11 suspects. Vicky Pelaez, 55, was detained along with her husband as they returned from a party. She is best known for her opinion columns, which often criticise the US government.
In 1985 she made headlines for being kidnapped by and interviewing the communist Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA). In a murky affair, Frecuencia Latina later sacked her for allegedly fabricating the kidnapping. Pelaez emigrated to the United States soon afterwards.
Pelaez's family and friends released details of the FBI raid late Sunday in the northern New York suburb of Yonkers.
"They took them out of the car and led them to two vehicles," her son Waldo Mariscal told La Prensa Spanish-language newspaper, his mother's employer. He said FBI agents removed computers from the house and interrogated him about his parents' politics and finances.
