ASHGABAT (AFP) - Turkmen authorities on Tuesday accused a French embassy employee and an OSCE representative of involvement in a spy plot aimed at undermining the government of this ex-Soviet Central Asian state.

"A cultural attache to the French embassy, Henri Tomassini, and an employee of the OSCE (Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe) mission, Benjamin Moro, are suspected of illegal activities directed against Turkmenistan," National Security Minister Geldymukhammed Ashirmukhammedov said Tuesday on Turkmen state television.

No immediate comment was available from the French embassy or the OSCE's representative office. A French embassy official contacted by phone however said Tomassini was charge d'affaires at the embassy.

"All the confirmed facts about the involvement of foreign embassy employees in this matter will be reported to the heads of these missions and entail appropriate measures," Turkmen President Saparmurat Niyazov said in broadcast comments.

"We will allow no-one to destroy the country or prevent the Turkmen people from building a peaceful future," Niyazov said.

Niyazov has instituted strict dictatorial rule accompanied by a personality cult centred on himself and his immediate family in this largely desert gas-rich state bordering Afghanistan, Iran, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. Ashirmukhammedov said three Turkmen citizens had also been arrested for involvement in the plot, which entailed "illegally collecting information with the aim of spreading dissatisfaction among the population."

Tomassini was accused of "handing over secret video equipment to Turkmen citizen Annakurban Amangylydzhov with the covert aim of videoing a simulated meeting of dissatisfied people, prisons, military buildings and law enforcement officers," the minister added.

Amangylydzhov, who had worked with "foreign secret services and centres of subversion," was then to hand over the video recordings to a British and a French national preparing to visit Turkmenistan as tourists, Ashirmukhammedov continued.