Son of the British Council chair arrested in St Petersburg (1st Lead)

Jan 16, 2008, 12:35 GMT

Moscow/London - In an odd twist to escalating British- Russian tensions over British Council offices, the cultural organization's director was arrested on charges of drunk driving, news agency Interfax reported Wednesday.

Stephen Kinnock, director of the British Council for north-west Russia and the son of former Labour leader Neil Kinnock who chairs the organization, was arrested late Tuesday night.

He was pulled over in St Petersburg for driving down a one-way street, a traffic officer told Interfax.

'While checking Mr Kinnock's documents, we noticed a steady smell of alcohol. He refused a physical examination, but a report was made calling upon passersby as witnesses,' the officer said.

Within half an hour, at midnight, the British consul to St Petersburg William Elliot arrived at the scene.

A spokesman from the British Council said Wednesday that employees had been summoned for interviews at Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) and some staff had received house calls from Foreign Ministry representatives late Tuesday night, the news agency Interfax reported from London.

The British government Wednesday condemned the arrest of 'several employees' at British Council offices in Russia.

A statement released by Downing Street after a cabinet meeting said that any attempt to intimidate staff at offices of the British cultural organization in Russia was 'completely unacceptable.'

The conflict over the cultural organization is the latest in a down-spiral of bilateral relations since the 2006 poisoning death in London of former Russian spy-turned-dissident Alexander Litvinenko.

When the new row erupted, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Russia had suspended drafting the new cooperation agreement that constitutes the muddy legal basis for the organization's operations 'as retaliation for the expelling of Russian diplomats from London.'

Russia cited a 1963 Vienna Convention on consular activities to order the closure in December of the British government's 15 regional offices including those in St Petersburg and Yekaterinenburg.

Britain, however, has ignored Russian directives, with its ambassador Tony Brenton saying the order to close was against international law.

A sign hung on the door of the British Council office in St Petersburg on Wednesday announced its forced closure.

'The British council in St Petersburg is temporarily closed in connection with late legal actions of the Russian authorities,' the sign read.

Head of the Duma Committee on International Affairs Konstantin Kosachyov said the parliament would discuss the diplomatic situation at its regular session on Wednesday.

He emphasized 'Russian authorities have all the means necessary to insist on stopping the activity of British Council offices.'

The Russian Foreign Ministry called the council's reopening a 'deliberate provocation' in a statement on Monday, and declared it would refuse visas to new council employees and demand back taxes from the organization.

British Ambassador Anthony Brenton, who has been vilified by pro- Putin groups in recent weeks, was summoned to the Foreign Ministry on Wednesday for the second time this week.

Anglo-Russian relations sunk to new Cold War lows after Moscow refused to extradite an ex-KGB bodyguard suspected of murdering Litvinenko.

But the conflict over the council's legal status has churned since 1994. The organization sees itself as the cultural arm of the British Embassy and is not registered as an non-governmental organization under new Russian laws.