US orders out 51 Russian diplomats

The US is ousting 51 Russian diplomats in retaliation for the planting of a suspected spy at the FBI.

The action is the largest diplomat expulsion since the Cold War.

It further clouds dealings between the administrations of George W Bush and Vladimir Putin.

"Assumedly, they are going to make a request for some of our most experienced diplomats to leave," said Bob Graham, vice-chairman of the Senate intelligence committee.

"That is the expected way in which these counter-intelligence incidents work when they go sour."

A top Putin foreign affairs aide expressed regret over the accused spies' expulsion.

"Any campaign of spy mania and searching for enemies brings deep regret and this is a fallback to the Cold War epoch," Sergei Prikhodko said.

Gennady Seleznyov, speaker of the lower house of parliament, the State Duma, said in response to the expulsions: "We'll find reasons for finding exactly that number of (American) diplomats who should not be working in Moscow."

A senior US official said six Russians were ordered expelled immediately because US investigators believe they were intelligence handlers directly implicated in the case of the accused spy, former FBI agent Robert Hanssen.

The other 45 Russians were being told to leave by this summer to reduce the number of Russian intelligence officers operating in the US, now believed to be well over 100, the official said.

Neither country was publicly disclosing details of the expulsion, but the US official said the Russian ambassador to the US, Yuri Ushakov, was summoned yesterday and told the Russians had to leave.