Russia to Oust 4 U.S. Diplomats in Tit for Tat

A spy dispute between Russia and the United States played out Friday, with officials here moving to eject four American diplomats and pledging to oust more later to replicate steps taken this week by Washington.

Afterward, U.S. officials said they considered the matter closed, signaling that they did not anticipate a second round of expulsions. And senior officials of both countries said relations on other issues need not suffer.

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, during a speech in Washington, said he realizes that the expulsions “could cause a lot of consternation within our embassy” in Moscow but that they should not cause lasting damage to relations between the two nations.

“The president considers the matter closed,” White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer said, as President Bush flew to Maine for a speech.

During a visit to Stockholm to meet with European leaders, Russian President Vladimir V. Putin also said he did not see a sharp setback to U.S.-Russian ties. “I do not think that it will have big consequences,” he told reporters.

Powell defended the U.S. decision to expel members of Russia’s diplomatic contingent.

After FBI agent Robert Philip Hanssen’s arrest last month on charges of spying for the Russians, “we responded in a way that was measured, realistic, practical, and as far as . . . we are concerned, that ended the matter,” Powell said.

“And it is not part of a great scheme; it was a stand-alone problem we had to deal with,” he said. “We didn’t shrink from it.”

Powell noted that, even as reports of the U.S. expulsions led to headlines around the world Thursday about “how terrible it’s going to be, our Space Command was working with Russian authorities to make sure we all knew where the Mir [space station] was going.”

“So our relationship continues, and we’ll see what we can do about isolating this one incident,” he said. “But we will wait to see the totality of Russian response.”

As if to emphasize that it was business as usual in Moscow, U.S. Ambassador James Collins set off on a previously planned 10-day train trip through Siberia and the Ural Mountains to inaugurate a series of “American Corners” in regional libraries. It is one of many cultural and development projects begun in Russia by the U.S. during the past decade.

In his absence, it was the deputy U.S. chief of mission, John Ordway, who received the not-unexpected summons Friday morning to the Foreign Ministry here. He heard a formal protest over the order Wednesday to expel four Russian diplomats and Moscow’s plans to match them.

According to State Department spokesman Charles Hunter, the Russians informed the U.S. that the four American diplomats had been declared persona non grata. “An additional number will have to leave by summer,” he added, although that figure has not been determined.

A State Department official who asked not to be identified said it was understood that the Russians ultimately will expel “an equivalent number” to those thrown out by the Americans. The U.S. is expected to eventually kick out an additional 46 Russians.

The U.S. Embassy in Moscow has about 1,200 employees, about 500 of them Americans with diplomatic status and most of the rest Russians, an embassy spokesman said. Among the Americans, only about 250 have purely diplomatic positions; the rest include teachers, Peace Corps volunteers, security and support personnel, and contractors working on various aid programs.

In Russia, a few analysts were questioning whether espionage was the only issue and whether their government has gone too far in antagonizing the U.S. since Putin took power more than a year ago pledging to restore his nation’s international stature.

“Russia runs a very serious risk of being drawn back into Cold War,” warned Andrei A. Piontkovsky, director of the Independent Institute for Strategic Studies, a think tank here.

He cited Russia’s increased friendliness with Cuba and Iran and its recent attempts to organize a bloc of nations to oppose Bush’s plans for a national missile defense system.

“With its ill-conceived foreign policy . . . over the last 12 months, Russia has really been asking for it,” Piontkovsky said.

“What makes things worse is that all this has been taking place at a time when the Clinton administration was replaced by the Cold War veterans who came to the White House with Bush and who still have this complex of Cold War winners. At the same time, a lot of people in Putin’s entourage--including Putin himself--suffer from the complex of Cold War losers.”

If both countries carry out their threats to the fullest, it will be the largest mutual expulsion of diplomats since 1986.

Both sides maintained that their hands were forced.

Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft said the Russians left the U.S. little choice.

“I think it’s intolerable for the United States of America to countenance the existence of those foreign intelligence officers who subvert our own law enforcement resources,” he said. “And when we have situations like we’ve had in the United States, we have to take a response.”

Russian Foreign Minister Igor S. Ivanov also said his side had no choice when faced with baseless “political actions” by the U.S.

Viktor A. Kremenyuk, deputy director of the USA-Canada Institute here, said the problem might have been avoided if Russia had responded differently after the arrest of Hanssen, who is accused of having spied for the Soviet Union and then Russia since 1985.

“Ideally, Russia should have offered its apologies and said: ‘We are sorry, it was a mistake, it was the Soviet Union, not us, etc.,’ ” Kremenyuk said. “But the Russian authorities were silent. And naturally, the U.S. took offense.”

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Daniszewski reported from Moscow and Lichtblau from Washington. Alexei V. Kuznetsov and Sergei L. Loiko of The Times’ Moscow Bureau contributed to this report.