Tass news agencies reported. The FSB, which is the main successor agency to the Soviet-era KGB, said it could only comment on the report within a week's time. U.S. Embassy officials, however, said the flight was a U.S. military flight and therefore should have had diplomatic status. Russian officials had insisted on boarding the flight, said Lugar's spokesman, Andy Fisher. «They did not. The border patrol finally got orders to let us go,» Fisher said. Maksim Zhalayev, deputy head of the border control service at Perm's Bolshoye Savino airport, accused the senators of refusing to follow border guards' orders, telling Russia's Ekho Moskvy radio that was the reason behind the delay. The senators and their aides spent three days in Russia visiting sites where warheads are stored before destruction under the U.S.-funded Comprehensive Threat Reduction program. --SP 1411 Local Time 1111 GMT
