Russia opens probe over Litvinenko killing

MOSCOW: Russia's internal security service, the FSB, opened an espionage investigation on Friday after the man wanted by Britain for the murder of ex-agent Alexander Litvinenko pointed the finger at Britain's MI6 intelligence agency.   

In a statement the FSB said it had opened the case "after analysis of statements by Russian businessman Andrei Lugovoi and additional information received from him on the espionage activities of British intelligence services" in Russia.   

The statement from the FSB, successor organisation to the Soviet KGB, gave no further details on who was suspected in the probe and did not explicitly state that the probe related to the poisoning death in London last year of Litvinenko, a former FSB agent.   

However it appeared to refer to "material" that Lugovoi said at a news conference last month he would be presenting to Russian security services on the Litvinenko case.   

Moscow and London have been engaged in a diplomatic tug-of-war since British prosecutors last month announced they were seeking Lugovoi's extradition from Russia for killing Litvinenko.   

While London has been seeking Lugovoi, Moscow has continued to demand that London hand over one of the Kremlin's most outspoken critics, the exiled businessman Boris Berezovsky, who lives in London and was a friend of Litvinenko.   

Lugovoi and an associate, Dmitry Kovtun, met Litvinenko in an upmarket London hotel on November 1, the day Litvinenko fell ill, and both left traces of the radioactive isotope used to poison him in various locations while returning to Russia.   

Both men have denied any responsibility for Litvinenko's death.   

Russia has insisted that its constitution bars it from handing over Lugovoi to face justice abroad and has launched its own investigation into Litvinenko's killing.   

At last month's news conference Lugovoi, a former Kremlin bodyguard who owns a private security firm, said he believed that Britain's MI6 intelligence agency was behind Litvinenko's killing and that Berezovsky was also involved.   

He said that Berezovsky's motive was to prevent the publication of damaging information that would threaten his status as a political refugee in Britain.   

Lugovoi's comments echoed claims by Russian newspapers that the killing could have been orchestrated by Berezovsky to discredit President Vladimir Putin.   

Berezovsky has repeatedly and publicly called for a coup to oust Putin's administration, although he has also said afterwards each time that he does not mean the use of physical violence.   

Boosted by oil wealth, an increasingly confident Russia has grown wary of Britain's security services, prompting comparisons with the era of the Cold War, when British spies were regarded here as a serious threat.   

In January last year, Russia's intelligence service notably alleged that British diplomats had been involved in a spy ring in which agents passed secrets through a high-tech communications system hidden in a fake rock in a Moscow park.   

On Friday a British embassy spokesman in Moscow reiterated that London saw no intelligence connection to the Litvinenko case.   

"We have requested the extradition of Mr Lugovoi to face trial in a United Kingdom court for a very grave crime. We await the formal Russian response," the spokesman said.   

"The Litvinenko murder is a criminal matter and not an issue of intelligence -- a British citizen was killed in London, and UK citizens and visitors were put at risk," he said.   

Analysts have linked Moscow's increasing prickliness in relations with the West to the Kremlin's concern to ensure a smooth transition at upcoming parliamentary and presidential elections.   

Putin is due to hand over to a successor after the presidential election next March.   

In an interview published on Friday in the Komsomolskaya Pravda tabloid, Lugovoi predicted that Berezovsky's next "sacrificial victims" could be radical opposition leader Eduard Limonov and Kremlin critic and former prime minister Mikhail Kasyanov.