Britain and Russia face diplomatic stalemate over man accused of poisoning Litvinenko
CONOR SWEENEY IN MOSCOW AND GERRI PEEV
BRITAIN and Russia were locked in a diplomatic wrangle last night over the extradition of the man accused of poisoning Alexander Litvinenko, the former KGB spy.
British prosecutors yesterday named Andrei Lugovoy, a former spy colleague of Mr Litvinenko, as their prime suspect, calling for him to be extradited immediately from Russia to face murder charges in the UK.
Sir Ken MacDonald, the director of Public Prosecutions, said he had instructed Crown Prosecution lawyers to seek Mr Lugovoy's extradition so he could be "brought swiftly before a court in London".
Mr Litvinenko died of acute radiation injury after ingesting a lethal dose of polonium and suffered a "difficult, fatal illness", Sir Ken said.
"I have concluded that the evidence sent to us by the police is sufficient to charge Andrei Lugovoy with the murder of Mr Litvinenko by deliberate poisoning. I have further concluded that a prosecution of this case would clearly be in the public interest."
But Russian authorities insisted they would not extradite Andrei Lugovoy to Britain because of a clear constitutional ban precluding it.
In a conciliatory gesture, the prosecutor's office in Moscow offered instead to bring a case against Mr Lugovoy if they received sufficient evidence of his role from British authorities.
Later, Downing Street also appeared to hint that there could be room for movement from Moscow, insisting that the emphasis was that there had been no co-operation from Russia "so far".
Mr Lugovoy gave an open-air press briefing on the banks of the Moskva River for Russian media to dismiss as "politically motivated" the murder charges laid against him for the poisoning of Mr Litvinenko in London last November.
He denied any role in Mr Litvinenko's slow death from radioactive polonium.
"I did not kill Litvinenko, have nothing to do with his death and can prove with facts my distrust of the so-called evidence collected by Britain's justice system," he insisted, looking relaxed in the sunshine wearing a casual denim shirt.
Until now, Mr Lugovoy has laughed off the rumours that he would face prosecution for a role in the murder of his former colleague in the KGB.
Now, the Moscow-based businessman will face arrest if he travels abroad, should an international arrest warrant be issued for him by Britain.
Mr Lugovoy had known Mr Litvinenko since they trained together in the KGB academy in the former Soviet Union.
Mr Litvinenko fled Russia four years ago however, claiming his life was in danger after he accused the Russian secret services of plotting to kill the businessman Boris Berezovsky.
He then lived in London in a house owned by Mr Berezovsky, the exiled oligarch who recently called for a revolution to oust president Vladimir Putin from the Kremlin. Mr Lugovoy also had links to Mr Berezovksy, providing security services through his business in the past.
Tony Blair's spokesman said the case was being taken very seriously and stressed that the UK would "not in any way shy away" from trying to ensure justice prevails. Margaret Beckett, the Foreign Secretary, said she expected "full co-operation", while the Russian ambassador, Yury Fedotov, was summoned to the Foreign Office.
The statement from the Crown Prosecutor's Office demands Mr Lugovoy's extradition for this "extraordinarily grave crime", citing the 1957 European Convention on Extradition.
However, Russia only signed this in 2001, which should mean its constitution, adopted in 1993 after the fall of communism, takes precedence.
The Kremlin has always denied any role in the death of Mr Litvinenko, though he is widely perceived as a traitor within the security services for speaking out against his former colleagues and for taking British citizenship.
• THE tension between London and Moscow over the death of Alexander Litvinenko is just one example of Britain and Russia's worsening relationship.
In Russia, there is anger over Britain "sheltering" exiled tycoons, such as Boris Berezovsky, who has called for a revolution to oust President Vladimir Putin.
Last month, the Russian leader said in Red Square that Russia had enemies "who show the same contempt for human life as in the time of the Third Reich and the same claims to world exclusiveness and diktat".
According to the World Energy Council, Russia now supplies about 40 per cent of the European Union's natural gas. As the West increasingly relies on that energy source, Russia has flexed more muscle on the global stage, objecting to missile defence systems and re-nationalising successful firms. Last year, Shell and its partners were forced to sell half their Sakhalin oil project to Russia's gas export monopoly, Gazprom. The consortium agreed last month to pay hundreds of millions more per year in dividends to Moscow.
Yuri Federov, of the Chatham House think-tank, said: "The European political class and European top echelons are, on the one hand, in a panic about European energy dependence on Russia, and, on the other hand they don't know how to overcome this dependence."
The Litvinenko case was a very small part of a much larger degradation of Russia's relationship with the West, he said.
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Alexander Litvinenko
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Last updated: 22-May-07 00:29 BST |
