Russian reported to be a suspect in ex-spy poisoning says he's just a witness

Monday, January 29th 2007, 6:46 am

By: News On 6

LONDON (AP)_ The man reported by British media to be the prime suspect in the radioactive poisoning death of former KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko said in a television interview Monday that police had told him he was just a witness.

Andrei Lugovoi told Sky News in Russia that he had fully cooperated with British authorities investigating the death of Litvinenko and that they had not named him as a suspect.

``I want to stress that officially I am a just a witness and not even a suspect,'' Lugovoi said. ``I was told that by Scotland Yard when they were in Moscow.''

Speculation that the British police had identified their prime suspect mounted last week, with several media outlets claiming that a request for Lugovoi's arrest would be made.

Lugovoi and a business associate, Dimitri Kovtun, met with the former spy at London's Millennium Hotel on the morning he fell ill. The hotel is among a number of sites investigators found traces of Polonium 210 _ the radioactive isotope responsible for killing Litvinenko.

Officials had not told him the Polonium trail led to him, Lugovoi said.

``Explaining this (the trail) is the job of the investigators. Secondly, no one has officially stated to me that Polonium was found at the places I visited so all this comes from the press and their information is either unverified or false,'' he said.

Litvinenko, 43, died on Nov. 23. He had fled to Britain after leaving Russia and was granted asylum in 2000. In exile, he became a vocal opponent of Russian President Vladimir Putin, accusing him in a deathbed statement of masterminding his death.

Lugovoi said he understood why people may see him as a suspect in the high profile killing, but accused the British media of orchestrating a smear campaign against Russians.

``When reading the U.K. media one gets the impression they are spreading some kind of propaganda which is directed against Russian citizens,'' he said. ``I see in this some elements more fitting to Cold War time.''

Russian officials have denied any involvement in his murder. The politically charged case has driven relations between London and Moscow to post-Cold War lows.

In a reminder of the tensions, the Russian Prosecutor General's office reaffirmed last week that Russia would not extradite Lugovoi to Britain.

``A Russian citizen cannot be extradited to another country under the Russian Constitution,'' Natalia Fyodorova, a spokeswoman for Prosecutor-General's office, told The Associated Press.

She added that Russia would not put him on trial itself if Britain filed charges against Lugovoi, only if the Russian investigators looking into Litvinenko's murder decided to prosecute him.