MOSCOW - The highly publicized rout of a group of Moscow police officers allegedly running a criminal organization looked like a finely orchestrated pre-election maneuver, Russian analysts said Tuesday.

In what Interior Minister Boris Gryzlov called a declaration of "war against organized crime," six Moscow police officers and a general in the Emergency Situations Ministry were detained Monday and more than US$3 million was seized in a series of raids aimed at breaking up the group, Russian news reports said.

Analysts questioned the timing of the operation, saying it looked like a public relations campaign before December parliamentary elections.

"I can easily imagine that this was purely pre-electoral," said Elena Panfilova, director of Transparency International Russia, an anti-corruption organization.

She said, however, that any action prior to elections will appear to be part of a vote-winning campaign. There could be a real desire within the upper echelons of the police administration to clean out rotten elements, she said.

The officers, who are suspected of orchestrating up to 100 cases of extortion and making illegal detentions, were detained during 40 searches by the Federal Security Service, or FSB, and the Russian Interior Ministry on Monday. They were being questioned Tuesday in a FSB detention center.

The operation was closely followed by the Russian media, with journalists apparently tipped off to some of the raids beforehand. Gryzlov, who is also leader of the biggest pro-Kremlin party, United Russia, announced the operations while they were still being carried out.

"Without doubt, the method, the place and the time were chosen because of the start of the pre-election campaign," said Alexei Venediktov, editor in chief of Echo of Moscow radio station.

He said the operations were aimed at raising the authority of Gryzlov and his party in the minds of "normal citizens" who are often the victims of police corruption.

Gryzlov announced Tuesday that investigations into bribery by traffic police were also underway. He urged Russians to take photos of traffic police who try to exact bribes, and send them to the interior ministry, the Rossiya television channel said.

The head of the anti-corruption committee in the State Duma, the lower house of parliament, disagreed that the operation had been planned for the campaign season. He said the investigation had been going on for more than a year.

"It is simply impossible to arrange an exact date for carrying out such a widespread operation," Nikolai Kovalyov said on Echo of Moscow radio.

More than 1,400 Russian police officers were convicted of crimes last year, the vast majority of them corruption-related offenses.

Russian police officers, like other state employees, are poorly paid, and many consider bribes a legitimate way to enhance their meager salaries.