Another twist to the Litvinenko poisoning case.

[Dartzap]

Beeb

UK 'behind Litvinenko poisoning'
The man suspected of poisoning ex-KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko has said it could not have happened without the involvement of British secret services.

Andrei Lugovoi, who denies the allegations, told a Moscow news conference that he was a scapegoat.

Mr Lugovoi said MI6 had recruited Mr Litvinenko and had also tried to recruit him, to collect information on Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The UK said the matter was a criminal rather than intelligence matter.

"A British citizen was killed in London and UK citizens and visitors were put at risk," a Foreign Office spokesman said.

The UK last week requested Mr Lugovoi's extradition in connection with the crime. But the Russian constitution forbids it from extraditing its own citizens.

Mr Litvinenko died in November 2006 after exposure to the radioactive isotope polonium-210.

Polonium-210 was found in a string of places that Mr Lugovoi visited in London, but he said he was a witness, not a suspect in the case.

A former KGB officer and British agent, Oleg Gordievsky, described Mr Lugovoi's claims as "silly fantasies". He denied Mr Litvinenko had been working for the British secret services.

"He used to be... a member of the FSB, it is a domestic organisation of the KGB, and MI6 is not interested in information about the domestic service, so Litvinenko was not needed," he told BBC News.

'No motive'

Mr Lugovoi, himself an ex-KGB agent, said the poisoning could not have happened without some involvement from the British intelligence services.

"Even if [British special services] hadn't done it itself, it was done under its control or connivance," he said, adding he had evidence of this, without giving details.

Mr Litvinenko, he said, was a British spy whom MI6 could no longer control.



Mr Lugovoi said that either British foreign intelligence agency MI6, the Russian mafia, or fugitive Kremlin opponent Boris Berezovsky were behind the killing.

"The main role," however, "is played by the British special services and their agents," Mr Lugovoi said.

Mr Berezovsky, who has been granted asylum in Britain, has always denied any involvement in Mr Litvinenko's death.

Mr Lugovoi said he was "openly recruited as the British security service agent. They asked me to collect any... compromising information about President Putin and the members of his family".

He said he was initially asked to find economic information, but he said the large fees he was paid made him realise he was being recruited to do more than that.

He went on to say that he lacked the motive to kill Mr Litvinenko.

"Sacha [Litvinenko] was not my enemy. I didn't feel cold or hot from whatever he was doing, from the books that he was writing. I've been in business for a long time and I was not really interested," he said.

Mr Lugovoi also spoke about Russians who managed to get British passports by working for special services. The British public, he said, should know what certain Russians were doing in London.

Possible, I suppose. Those wacky Spooks, eh?