RUSSIA HOLDS US MAN IN DRUG BUST

A US citizen alleged to have links with the intelligence services has been
arrested in Russia while buying drugs, the state security service said on
Tuesday.

The Federal Security Service (FSB) said John Edward Tobbin was seized in a
cafe on 1 February, and that drugs had also been found in the flat he
rented in the city of Voronezh, 475km (300 miles) south of Moscow.

They said he had been trained an a US intelligence centre, but this did not
form part of the charge against him.

However, a US diplomatic source rejected any suggestion that Mr Tobbin, had
worked as a spy and said he was "just out of college," aged 22 or 23.

The arrest comes at a time of heightened tension over alleged cases of
espionage on both sides of the old Cold War divide.

Fulbright scholar

The FSB was quoted by the Interfax news agency as saying: "Investigators
studying Tobbin's case found out that before travelling to Russia he
studied Russian at a US Defence Department college in Monterrey and
received training at the Intelligence Centre in Fort Huachuka, Arizona."

The dean of foreign students at Voronezh State University, Zhanna Sokolova,
said that Mr Tobbin had arrived in September 2000 on a prestigious
Fulbright award, to study as a graduate student in political science.

She said that Mr Tobbin got into a fight in a cafe, and the police intervened.

"As we understand it, when they noticed there was no smell of alcohol, they
searched him and found marijuana," she said.

A house search uncovered more of the drug, she said, and Mr Tobbin was
detained after refusing a police summons.

Neither the US Embassy in Moscow, nor the local Fulbright programme office
could immediately comment on the report.

The FSB said it had information that Mr Tobbin received access to work with
secret documents in May 1997.

Perfect Russian

Ms Sokolova said he wanted to study changes in the mood of the Russian
people, including their goals and hopes, over the last 10 years.

She added that his Russian was perfect.

On Monday the trial resumed in Moscow of a Russian academic accused of
passing intelligence to a British company.

In the United States on 18 February an FBI agent was arrested on charges of
spying for Russia.

On 30 January it was revealed that a Russian diplomat at the United Nations
in New York had defected to the United States, in mysterious circumstances.

And on 6 December a Russian court found a US citizen, Edward Pope, guilty
of espionage in the first case of its kind since 1960.