EU Meets on Spy Poisoning

The recent poisoning of former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko, who died on Nov. 23 from a large dose of the radioactive isotope polonium 210, is expected to top the agenda at a meeting of EU interior ministers on Monday.

British Home Secretary John Reid has told Sky News television that the UK health authorities and police have "already started to liaise with our European colleagues." Any health threat is absolutely minimal so far as we can make out, added Reid, who is at a two-day meeting of EU justice and interior ministers in Brussels.

"British police will be going to Russia to continue their inquiries," he said. "This investigation will proceed as normal, whatever the diplomatic or wider considerations."

Publicly accused Putin of death by poison

At the time of his poisoning in early November, Litvinenko had been investigating the murder of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, a fierce critic of the Kremlin's policies in Chechnya, who was shot to death in her Moscow apartment building.

From his deathbed, Litvinenko, a former intelligence agent of the KGB's successor agency, the Federal Security Service (FSB) had publicly fingered Russian President Vladimir Putin, for ordering his death. Litvinenko, who acquired British citizenship this year, had lived in exile in London among some 300,000 Russian emigres, many who are former defectors or wealthy tycoons.

Litvinenko's father told Moscow's Kommersant daily, that he was sure that President Vladimir Putin was involved in the death of his son. "There was an order right from the top to kill," said Walter Litvinenko, who added his son had requested a Muslim burial.

Putin, who had previously served as a KGB officer in the former East Germany and formerly headed the FSB, called Litvenenko's death tragic, but said in a statement on Friday, "This is not a violent death, so there is no ground for speculation."

Putin implicated by Chechen exile

A Chechen exile, Ahmed Sakayev, who was a close friend and had taken Litvenenko home on the day of the poisoning had also implicated Putin and former KGB colleagues in an interview with the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung.

"An operation of this scale would not take place without clearance from the top authority of the Russian state," he said.

An Italian contact, Mario Scaramella a security expert and academic, has also been contaminated with polonium 210 after linking up with Litvinenko in a sushi bar following the Millennium Hotel meeting.

"I have an amount of polonium in my body which is five times higher than the dose considered deadly," he said in a telephone interview aired by Italy's RAI 1 television. Still Scaramella had not ingested any food or drink at the sushi bar and the results of his pathology tests to date remain normal, according to a spokesman at London's University College Hospital.

Italian contact expected to make information public

Scaramella's lawyer, Claudio Rastrelli said over the weekend on Italian television that his client plans to make information that Litvinenko passed to him public.

The Kremlin has fully denied any involvement in the poisoning and has promised to cooperate with the British investigation.

British Home Secretary Reid said he was confident that Moscow was cooperating with the investigation, but The Sunday Times reported that British Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett had told senior ministers that Putin was angered at Britain's failure to gag Litvinenko after he was poisoned.