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'UK involved in spy's poisoning'
31/05/2007 14:57 - (SA)
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| Andrei Lugovoi enters Interfax news agency for a news conference in Moscow, in which he said Britain tried to recruit him to provide intelligence. (Alexander Zemlianichenko, AP)
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Moscow - British prosecutors' chief suspect in the killing of ex-KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko said on Thursday that British intelligence services had a hand in the poisoning - a claim likely to further damage relations between Moscow and London.
Andrei Lugovoi told a news conference that he had evidence to back up his claim but would only give details to Russian investigators.
Lugovoi, a Moscow businessman, met with Litvinenko on November 1 in London, hours before Litvinenko fell ill.
Britain last Friday formally requested Lugovoi's extradition to face murder charges. Russia refuses to hand him over, but says it could prosecute him at home if Britain presents enough evidence.
Diverting attention
Lugovoi described the British accusations as an attempt to divert attention from Litvinenko's contacts with Britain's spy services. Litvinenko, Lugovoi said, tried to recruit him to work for MI6, Britain's foreign intelligence agency, and gather compromising materials about Russian President Vladimir Putin.
"It's hard to get rid of the thought that Litvinenko was an agent who got out of the secret service's control and was eliminated," Lugovoi said. "Even if it was not done by the secret service itself, it was done under its control or connivance."
The British Foreign Office declined comment.
Lugovoi's allegations seem certain to further split Moscow and London over the sensational murder case. Litvinenko died on November 23 in a London hospital after ingesting radioactive polonium-210. In a deathbed statement, he accused Putin of being behind his killing.
Konstantin Kosachev, the Kremlin-connected head of the foreign affairs committee in the lower house of the Russian parliament, urged British authorities to help investigate "very serious accusations against British secret services".
"I do believe they will take these new versions as seriously as it should be," Kosachev said on Russia Today television.
British security services unhappy with Litvinenko
Lugovoi said the British security services were unhappy with Litvinenko for boasting of his contacts with senior MI6 officials and spilling secrets.
"In conversations with me, Litvinenko often went beyond his role as a recruitment agent and told me many things he shouldn't have said," Lugovoi said. "I got an impression that he was really getting out of British secret services' control. He believed that the British undervalued him and paid him too little for his service."
Lugovoi claimed that Boris Berezovsky, a Russian billionaire living in self-exile in London who is among Putin's most powerful political foes, might also have been involved in the death of Litvinenko. He said Litvinenko was angry after Berezovsky, his long-time friend and patron, cut a living allowance he paid Litvinenko.
Lugovoi, himself a former KGB agent, claimed that Litvinenko told him he could prove that the tycoon received political asylum in Britain under false pretences.
Russia has long sought Berezovsky's extradition to face charges of financial crimes that date back to the 1990s, when Russian state assets were snapped up by politically connected entrepreneurs at discount prices. Berezovsky says the charges are politically motivated.
Berezovsky denies being an agent
Lugovoi claimed that Berezovsky, who briefly served as a deputy secretary of Russia's presidential Security Council during the 1990s, also was an MI6 agent and gave British intelligence sensitive information about Russia.
Berezovsky on Thursday denied Lugovoi's allegations, and said they were part of a Kremlin effort to divert attention from itself.
"It is absolutely false," Berezovsky told The Associated Press. "MI6 absolutely knows who are agents for its organisation, it knows Berezovsky is not on that list. This is not the story of Lugovoi, this is the story the Kremlin wants to present to the world. The Kremlin in a corner. Putin is in a corner."
- AP
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