
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, July 5, 1994                   TAG: 9407050014
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: MOSCOW                                LENGTH: Short

FBI OPENS MOSCOW OFFICE, IS QUICKLY ASKED FOR HELP

FBI Director Louis Freeh opened the bureau's first office in Russia Monday and visited the fabled Lubyanka Square headquarters of the old Soviet KGB, where Russian crime-fighters promptly asked for his help.

Unless the two nations "launch a lawful, massive and coordinated law enforcement response," growing international organized crime will "pose a direct threat to decent people everywhere," Freeh said.

Everywhere Freeh set foot in the Russian capital, he made history as the first FBI director to do so.

Over 10 hours, he visited the chiefs of most of Russia's major police and security offices from Lubyanka Square to the Kremlin offices of President Boris Yeltsin's national security adviser, Yuri Baturin.

Freeh was welcomed by government ministers shaken by the explosive growth of Russian organized crime.

As he had over the past week in former Soviet satellites across Eastern Europe, Freeh sought and offered help in fighting organized crime, drug trafficking and money laundering, hate groups and the risk that criminals might steal nuclear weapons or their components and sell them to terrorists.

In effect, Freeh made himself the first occupant of the FBI's Moscow office.

The two FBI agents who will occupy the office full time have received their transfer orders but have not arrived. They will be given an office - yet to be selected - in the secure wing of the U.S. Embassy.

by CNB