Fury over Litvinenko case claims

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http://news.uk.msn.com/Article.aspx?cp-documentid=4979162

Fury over Litvinenko case claims


The Crown Prosecution Service and the Foreign Office have angrily denied claims that ministers have been exerting pressure for no action to be taken against two suspects in the Alexander Litvinenko murder case.

The News of the World reported that Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett had argued strongly against charging Moscow-based Andrei Lugovoy and Dmitri Kovtun.

Mr Litvinenko died in hospital in London last November, after being poisoned with the radioactive agent Polonium 210.

The former KGB officer was a fierce critic of President Vladimir Putin's Kremlin regime and had been granted political asylum in the UK.

Mrs Beckett is said to have stressed during a meeting of the Government's Cobra emergency committee that such a move would damage relations between Britain and Russia.

Her intervention angered CPS officials who feared it might offer a "green light" for the Russians to carry out further murders in the UK, according to the newspaper.

However, director of public prosecutions Sir Ken Macdonald insisted politicians had not sought to influence the probe.

"It's completely untrue that the CPS has come under any pressure from the Foreign Office in relation to the Alexander Litvinenko case," he said in a statement. "No decision has yet been taken in this case, and we are still looking at the evidence."

A Foreign Office spokesman insisted that Mrs Beckett had not made the comments reported.

"She never said this," he added. "This has always been a matter for the Metropolitan Police and the CPS."