The Russian counterintelligence service said Monday that it had detained two senior Armenian secret agents in Moscow and charged them with carrying out terrorist acts.


Vladimir Tomarovsky, a spokesman for the Federal Counterintelligence Service, said the agents had been arrested on the basis of information about their activities received from the Azerbaijani secret service.


A spokesman for the Azerbaijani secret service, Mirsalekh Akhundov, in a telephone interview Monday, named the Armenian officers as Lieutenant Colonel Dzhan Oganesyan, head of the intelligence department of the Armenian secret service, and his deputy, Major Ashot Galoyan.


Akhundov said Russian agents had also detained two other Armenians, Boris Simonyan and Valery Petrosyan, both of whom worked in the Federal Counterintelligence Service. He said the arrests took place in May.


"Our Ministry of National Security informed the Russian secret service about Armenian terrorists in Moscow," he said. "All of them are charged with terrorism on the territory of the Russian Federation and Azerbaijan."


Tomarovsky also confirmed a report in Izvestia that the General Military Prosecutor's Office had charged the detained secret agents last week with terrorism. But he refused to specify what terrorist acts the men are alleged to have carried out.


Akhundov said the Armenian agents had recruited a Russian citizen, whom he named as Igor Khatkovsky, and trained him in Moscow to carry out terrorist acts both in Russia and Azerbaijan.


Akhundov said that Khatkovsky, who was detained in May 1993, had blown up two passenger trains, one in Mineralny Vody in the North Caucasus region in Feruary last year and the other in June 1993 at Baku railway station. In May 1993, Khatkovsky blew up a freight train in Derbent, Russian North Caucasus, he said. There were no casualties in any of these incidents.