Litvinenko probe to spread to Europe
By Paula White,WNS UK Senior Correspondent
LONDON - British Home Secretary John Reid has said the probe into the radiation poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko would extend across Europe as police step up the hunt for the truth behind his death. Reid said he was confident that London was getting the necessary assistance from Moscow in the investigation into what happened to the former Russian spy. But as the police probe into Litvinenko's agonising death entered its third week amid reports Britain fears a long-term diplomatic fallout with Russia from the affair, new claims of blackmail and political and financial skullduggery emerged. Italian academic Mario Scaramella, a contact of Litvinenko who has tested positive for polonium-210, which poisoned the former agent, was said to be "well" in hospital.
Reid vowed that British authorities would have no fear of tracking leads outside Britain. He was to meet European counterparts in Brussels on Monday and Tuesday. "Over the next few days, I think all of these things will widen out a little from the circle just being here in Britain," he told Sky News television on Sunday. "Tomorrow I will be at the European Council and I will certainly be sharing information, getting what we can from European counterparts; the health authorities have already started to liaise with their European colleagues and the police will follow wherever this investigation leads -- inside or outside of Britain. "We've got Mr Litvinenko himself obviously died of radiation poisoning. We've got Mr Scaramella, who already is less serious in some of the tests showed, but more serious than others." Litvinenko's wife Marina "has a negligible increase in the risk compared to, say, Litvinenko himself. "The vast majority of this, with one exception, possibly another, is radioactive materials which contaminate things but aren't a danger to the public," he added. Self-styled security expert Scaramella met Litvinenko in a London sushi restaurant on November 1, shortly before the former spy first felt ill. In a letter Saturday to his lawyer, Sergio Rastrelli, cited by the Italian news agency ANSA, Scaramella said that "despite a deep anxiety... I currently feel well. I have no symptoms." "Scotland Yard and the British health authorities told me that I had been poisoned with polonium 210," he wrote. Urine tests revealed "traces of a dose of polonium significantly lower than that used against Litvinenko... but this dose... is nevertheless considered to be potentially deadly."
Amid speculation that the poison was brought in from Russia after traces of a radioactive substance were found on British Airways planes operating the London-Moscow route, Transport Secretary Douglas Alexander said that British airports were able to detect radioactive materials. "We have a layered system of security at our airports, some of which are visible to the public, some of those layers appropriately are not visible," he told BBC television. "We do have methods by which we can identify radioactive materials. That is only one dimension of that layered security." He added that some rumours circulating in British media were "spectacularly ill-informed", but theories into how Litvinenko came to be poisoned and who could be responsible again dominated Britain's Sunday newspapers.
posted by wnsworld @ 6:48 PM
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