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UK involved in death of former spy, suspect says

The chief suspect in the murder of former Russian agent Alexander Litvinenko said yesterday the British secret services were behind the killing and had also tried to recruit him to spy against Moscow.

Andrei Lugovoi, a former KGB agent whom Britain wants extradited to stand trial, said that the radiation poisoning of Litvinenko in London last November, "couldn't have taken place outside the control of Great Britain's special services."

Asked whether there was evidence of the direct involvement of the British secret service in the murder, Lugovoi said: "There is."

He refused to elaborate.

The tale of intrigue and espionage he spun during a media conference broadcast live on television was likely to ratchet up tensions between Moscow and London, already strained since Litvinenko's murder.

Fallout from the case has reached as far as Washington, which on Wednesday threw its weight behind Britain's attempt to extradite Lugovoi.

Lugovoi said that either Britain's MI6 intelligence agency, the Russian mafia, or fugitive Kremlin opponent Boris Berezovsky had carried out the Litvinenko killing.

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

Lugovoi suggested a motive by claiming that both Berezovsky and Litvinenko, a former Russian intelligence agent turned critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, were working for MI6. "It is hard to escape the thought that Litvinenko had become an agent who had escaped the control of the special services and they took him out -- if not the special services, then those under their control, or those cooperating with them."

Lugovoi, appearing confident and wearing a pink tie with a white shirt at the press conference in central Moscow, also claimed MI6 had attempted "open recruitment" of him.

"The English, in essence, offered me to collect any compromising material on President Putin and his family," Lugovoi said.

Britain yesterday insisted that Litvinenko's murder was "criminal," not intelligence-linked.

Asked for a response to Lugovoi's accusations, a UK Foreign Office spokesman said: "We're not getting into that at this stage."
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