Russia "regrets" holding up U.S. senators' plane

[Rose Siding]

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia said on Monday it regretted preventing U.S. Senators Richard Lugar and Barack Obama from boarding their plane for several hours at a provincial airport, blaming a bureaucratic mix-up.
....
"We regret the misunderstanding that arose and the inconvenience caused to the senators," Russia's Foreign Ministry said in a statement. "It would be inappropriate to talk about the 'detention' of the senators in Perm," it said.
....
"There was a lack of understanding about the status of the ... flight," said a spokesman at the U.S. embassy in Moscow.

"Once it was clarified, the plane left without being searched. The problem was solved," he said.

U.S. media reported heated arguments at Perm's airport on Sunday and that the White House, the Secretary of State and the Pentagon got involved in efforts to resolve the problem, contacting their counterparts in Moscow.

http://go.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=politicsNews&storyID=9498070&src=rss/ElectionCoverage

[emad]

1. Today's Telegraph:

US plays down rows over delays in Russia visits
By Nick Allen in Moscow
(Filed: 30/08/2005)

SNIP:

The aircraft belongs to the US military and has diplomatic status preventing any intrusion. The plane was later allowed to leave for the Ukrainian capital, Kiev, without inspection after the intervention of the US ambassador to Moscow, William Burns.

The incident on Sunday followed a visit by the delegation to weapons-related facilities. Sen Lugar is involved in a joint arms reduction programme, approved by the Kremlin but unpopular with parts of the Russian military.

He has also called for the suspension of Russia's membership of the G8 for backtracking on democracy and has experienced obstruction on earlier visits to Russia.

The matter was a likely cause of embarrassment to the Russian defence minister, Sergei Ivanov, who had just met with Sen Lugar in Moscow to discuss steps to secure or destroy Soviet-era stockpiles of nuclear weapons under the Co-operative Threat Reduction Programme.

Another Republican senator, Charles Hagel, was also briefly held up on Sunday in the Siberian city of Irkutsk after touring natural gas deposits, a US embassy spokesman said.

The "misunderstanding" over delayed flights was subsequently resolved, he added.

In a third incident, a US air force B1B Lancer that performed at the recent Moscow air show was prevented from leaving the country as Russian officials were reported to have tried to gain access to the classified aircraft.

The bomber, which is designed to carry nuclear weapons, flew in Russian airspace for the first time to take part in the show. It flew out after a delay of several hours.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/08/30/wplane30.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/08/30/ixworld.html