Russian Denies Poisoning Former Spy

The man reported by British media to be the prime suspect in the radioactive poisoning death of former KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko said again denied any role in the killing in a television interview Monday.

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 told the British broadcaster. "I was told that by Scotland Yard when they were in Moscow."

Asked by the Sky reporter whether he had killed Litvinenko, Lugovoi said, "of course not".

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 where 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 Lugovoi on trial simply because Britain filed charges against him. Fyodorova said he would face court in Russia only if Russian investigators looking into Litvinenko's murder decided to prosecute him.