President Boris Yeltsin warned of the dangers facing Russia when he praised the work of the Russian intelligence services in a pre-recorded speech broadcast on Russian Mayak radio on Friday.

But he gave a pledge that the watchdog police of the Soviet era was a thing of the past.

"The Russian constitution now rules out the very possibility of the re-emergence of political police.

Never again will the special service be the watchdog of political ideologists or state leaders.

They will never again decide on behalf of the people what and how they can think and speak, they will not persecute people for their views," Yeltsin said.

However, he said foreign spies were continuing to work in Russia.

"Notwithstanding positive changes after the end of the Cold War, a tough fight is under way in the world.

Competition for new technologies, resources and geopolitical influence is rising.

The activities of foreign intelligence on Russian territory show no sign of abating.

"An attempt to hand over information about the combat control of our missiles has been thwarted recently.

The leakage of this information could have seriously undermined the combat readiness of our missile troops.

Terrorism poses a horrible threat to society.

Over the past years we have set up special structures to combat it." "It is obvious that in modern conditions the economic security of the country is becoming one of the most important tasks for our security officers," he said, speaking on the radio.

BBC Monitoring (http://www.monitor.bbc.co.uk), based in Caversham in southern England, selects and translates information from radio, television, press, news agencies and the Internet from 150 countries in more than 70 languages.
 

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