MOSCOW, Jan 16: The British Council suspended operations at its Saint Petersburg office on Wednesday as London condemned the questioning and detention by Russian secret police of employees at the cultural body.

A spokeswoman for Britain’s consulate in Russia’s second city stressed that the closure of the office was not permanent but had been forced by the Russian FSB agency’s questioning of Russian employees at the British Council.

“There has been no official closure of the British Council but today the British Council is closed since all the employees have been summoned for questioning by various law enforcement agencies,” the spokeswoman Anna Myslova said.

British Council spokeswoman Clare Sears said from London that the Russian employees had been summoned for questioning by the FSB, the secretive internal security agency that succeeded the Soviet KGB.

The employees had also been visited by Russian interior ministry officials at their homes on Tuesday evening, Sears said.

In another incident the British head of the Saint Petersburg office, Stephen Kinnock, was briefly detained on Tuesday evening, Sears said. She declined to comment on a report by Interfax news agency that Kinnock had been stopped by a traffic policeman on suspicion of drink driving.

Kinnock is the son of the British Council’s chairman, Neil Kinnock, who is a former leader of the Labour party that currently governs Britain and a former European Union commissioner.

In London, British Foreign Secretary David Miliband condemned the Russian measures against the British Council and said Moscow’s ambassador to London had met with the head of the diplomatic service.

“Any intimidation or harassment of officials is obviously completely unacceptable,” said Miliband.

The row over the British Council blew up this week against the background of a long-running deterioration in relations between the two countries.

Moscow ordered the closure of two regional branches of the council, arguing that they were acting outside their official status due to tax and other irregularities.

The British Council organises cultural and educational cooperation between the two countries. It has scaled back the number of its offices in recent years from 15 to three at present.

Closure of the Saint Petersburg and Yekatarinburg branches would leave just the Moscow headquarters operating.

Britain insisted it would keep the branches in Saint Petersburg and Yekaterinburg operating and said it was fully in compliance with Russian law.

Relations have plummeted since the 2006 killing in London by radiation poisoning of former Russian agent Alexander Litvinenko.—AFP