MOSCOW -- U.S. citizen Leonid Komarovsky has been arrested in Turkmenistan following a plot to assassinate Turkmen President Saparmurat Niyazov last week, Moscow Radio reported Tuesday.

Komarovsky, who was described as a Russian journalist and script writer with joint U.S. and Russian citizenship, was arrested on November 26 during a business trip to Turkmenistan, Moscow Echo Radio reported.

The arrest came a day after an attack by armed gunmen on Niyazov's motorcade as he was traveling to work which has been blamed on exiled opposition leaders abroad and a Turkmen businessman, Guvanch Duzhmayev.

The U.S. Embassy in Ashkhabad confirmed that a U.S. citizen was detained in Turkmenistan, adding that the embassy was seeking consular access to that individual.

Niyazov, who has ruled this energy-rich Central Asian state for the past 17 years, was unhurt in the assassination attempt in the capital Ashkhabad last week.

Presidential spokesman Serdar Durdiyev branded the attack a coup attempt and said that the chief organizer was Niyazov's ex-foreign minister Boris Shikhmuradov, who is living in self-imposed exile abroad.

Other ringleaders were named as former deputy agriculture minister Sapar Yklymov, former central banker Khudoiberdy Orazov and Nurmukhammed Khanamov, an ex-ambassador to Turkey, who all live abroad.

Durdiyev also named Guvanch Dzhumayev, head of a firm called Gairat, as the leader of the attempt on the president within Turkmenistan and said members of Dzhumayev's family had also been involved, including his son Timur.

The presidential spokesman said that 23 people had been arrested in connection with the attempt, more than half of them foreigners, and the authorities were now trying to determine where they were from.

Niyazov, speaking on national television, said that one Turkish mercenary had been involved who had been promised 8,000 euros for his participation.