Top U.S. and Russian officials continued to spar over the CIA spy scandal Sunday, but both sides agreed they must continue covert operations.
Andrei Kozyrev, Russia's foreign minister, said on NBC's Meet the Press, spying is "part of the agreed-upon game."
But he doesn't want the arrest of the CIA's Aldrich Ames, accused of selling U.S. secrets to Russia, at the forefront of the U.S.-Russian relationship. "I am against politicizing."
He blasted one of his own top military leaders, Lt. Gen. Mikhail Kolesnikov, who said Saturday that Ames "worked for us. He defended our interests because he exposed spies who were pumping Russian secrets to the United States."
Kozyrev challenged Kolesnikov, saying Ames' guilt should be decided in U.S. courts.
Ames, 52, and his wife, Rosario, 41, are being held without bond on suspicion of selling U.S. secrets for $ 1.5 million.
The veteran CIA employee is thought to have compromised at least 20 operations, leading to the execution of at least two U.S. spies.
Last week, the U.S. expelled Aleksandr Lysenko, intelligence chief at the Russian Embassy in Washington.
But critics complain the U.S. isn't responding boldly enough.
Former Defense secretary Dick Cheney, a Republican preparing to campaign for president, called the Clinton administration soft and "naive in terms of their assumptions about what's happening there."
"We need to pursue our own personal interests, our national interests as a nation," he says.
"We have to get over the idea that this is a partnership," said Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind. Also appearing on Meet the Press, he called U.S. relations with Russia "a tough rivalry. These are tough people with whom to deal."
While he favors assistance to Russia for dismantling nuclear and chemical weapons and grain loans which "may be helpful to our farmers," Lugar says
"we're not going to be involved in handouts."
Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said on ABC's This Week With David Brinkley the $ 900 million of Russian aid scheduled to be doled out beginning Oct. 1 should be reconsidered.
"Whatever Yeltsin wants is our policy," he says. "I think that's really naive."
The aid money, says the ranking minority member on the Senate Appropriations subcommittee on foreign operations, might be better spent on former Soviet republics.
Kozyrev, speaking via satelite in Moscow, urged U.S. politicians to not "spoil the whole relationship" over Ames.
He says Russia, under Boris Yeltsin's leadership, is "standing here against the nationalists and former Soviet type system and even fascists now alone, I'm sorry to say. But we have good intentions."
In Washington, officials continued to try to determine how a CIA employee could sell secrets and spend lavishly for years without being detected.
Former CIA director Robert Gates blames Congress, which in 1990 refused to allow the agency to pry into employee spending and credit files.
Ames spent lavishly, paying $ 540,000 in cash for a house, and driving a red Jaguar.
No matter what is learned from damage done by Ames, spying on each other won't stop, both sides say.
"Both of them (spy agencies) are engaged in the other side of activities. Let them not draw all of us into political controversy," says Kozyrev.
Cheney agreed, warning against being naive when dealing with Russia - "a major nuclear-armed state that we have a history of hostility and confrontation with. We need all the intelligence we can get."
