WORLD> Europe
Czechs expel two Russian diplomats-Web site
(Agencies)
Updated: 2009-08-18 02:15

PRAGUE: The Czech Republic expelled one Russian diplomat and told another not to come back from holiday due to suspicions they were spying, news Web site www.idnes.cz said on Monday, citing unnamed diplomatic sources.

The Web site, an online version of the biggest mainstream daily, Mlada fronta Dnes, cited the sources as saying the expelled diplomat was a deputy to the military attache at the Russian embassy in Prague.

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Czech Prime Minister Jan Fischer and the Foreign Ministry both declined to comment on the report.

The Russian Foreign Ministry also had no immediate comment, and a spokesman for the Russian embassy in Prague said he was not aware of any such action.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov was asked about the report in the southern city of Astrakhan.

"It is another provocation," he said, without making clear whether he was referring to an expulsion or merely to the report.

Relations between Russia and the Czech Republic, formerly part of the Soviet empire but now a member of NATO and the European Union, have cooled over US plans to build a radar base in the country as part of its missile defence shield.

The plans -- now on hold pending a review by the Obama administration and due to stalled ratification by the Czech parliament -- have prompted an increase in Russian spying activity in the Czech Republic, its counterintelligence agency BIS said in September last year.