Russian spymaster: terror attacks at summits thwarted

The chief of Russia’s former KGB agency said Friday that it had prevented several terrorist attacks during international summits hosted by Russia.

Federal Security Service director Nikolai Patrushev said that "preventative actions helped thwart bandit leaders' plans for conducting terror attacks and hurting Russia on the international arena," the ITAR-Tass, Interfax and RIA Novosti news agencies reported.

Patrushev specifically referred to terror attacks allegedly planned for the G-8 summit in St.Petersburg last July and Russia-European Union summits hosted by Russia in the Black Sea resort of Sochi in May 2006 and in the Volga River city of Samara last month, the reports said. He would not give any details.

Chechen rebels have conducted numerous terror attacks in Russia, including the 2004 seizure of hostages at a school in Beslan which ended in the deaths of 333 people, more than half of them children, and the 2002 seizure of hundreds of hostages at a Moscow theater.