MORE ON GRENADE ATTACK.

As was reported here yesterday, an unidentified attacker fired a grenade from a Mukha portable launcher at the US Embassy in Moscow on September 13, damaging the building’s sixth floor but causing no casualties. According to Russian Federal Security Service officials, the grenade was fired from a building just opposite the embassy. Russian security officers found the launcher, along with gloves and a black ski mask, which they say suggests that the terrorist act was the work of professionals. The attack came in the wake of Russian denunciations of NATO air strikes against the Bosnian Serbs, and on the eve of US Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott’s visit to Moscow to explain the US position. Officials and commentators in Washington and Moscow said that there was no reason to conclude that the terrorist act was connected with the events in Bosnia, or those in Chechnya. Foreign Ministry spokesman Grigory Karasin said that all measures would be taken to protect the lives of American diplomats. The Internal Affairs Ministry and Federal Security Service announced the introduction of severe security precautions around US facilities in Russia, including the consulates in St. Petersburg, Yekaterinburg, and Vladivostok. Moscow’s MVD said that the security measures introduced around the US embassy equal those taken in October 1993 during the coup and fighting in Moscow. Russian law enforcement agencies are investigating the incident. (1)

Yeltsin in Tight Spot.