In A tit-for-tat retaliation, Moscow yesterday responded to the intended US expulsion of 50 Russian diplomats by saying it would expel an equal number of American diplomats, CNN and the RIA Novosti news agency reported.
The US State Department had earlier confirmed that it had expelled four Russian diplomats as spies and would be asking a further 46 to leave by July.
The move, which will certainly sour relations between the two countries, comes only weeks after the arrest of a senior FBI counter-intelligence officer, Mr Robert Hanssen, on espionage charges - the four immediately expelled are being directly linked to him by the State Department.
Mr Hanssen was arrested on February 18th after authorities said he dropped off a package of documents at a Virginia park for his Russian contacts. He is scheduled to appear for a preliminary hearing on May 21st.
President Bush said the expulsions "spoke for themselves" and would not harm relations with Russia.
In a broadcast from Moscow, a CNN reporter Steve Harrigan, said the Russian Foreign Minister, Mr Igor Ivanov, had been in touch with his US conterpart, Mr Colin Powell, and had told him Russia did not want to expel the diplomats but that they "had to take adequate measures".
Asked when the American diplomats would have to leave, Mr Ivanov told CNN: "They won't have long to wait."
Earlier Mr Ivanov said the US move was a groundless "political act", and said Moscow regretted the move. "There are no and have been no grounds for this," Mr Ivanov said in a statement read over state-controlled ORT television.
"If anyone had any questions or doubts, this could easily have been settled along . . . special channels and by special contacts," he said, referring to the "well-established" ties between Moscow and Washington.
"Unfortunately, Washington has chosen another way, so this step cannot be regarded as anything but a political one," Mr Ivanov said.
But the US President's National Security Adviser, Dr Condoleezza Rice, dismissed the suggestion saying that the issue of the number of Russian diplomats in the US had been on the agenda for some time with the Russian government.
Diplomatic sources suggest that the matter had been raised by the Clinton administration and put the number of Russian agents at work in the US under diplomatic cover at as many as 100, up at Cold War levels.
Dr Rice said that "their presence here is not representative of the sort of relations we want with the Russians".
Among those expelled was the press attache, Mr Vladimir Frolov, who has already returned to Moscow. And CNN reports some "consternation" in the Russian embassy at the precision with which the US has identified agents, suggesting the possible presence of a US agent in the embassy.
