MOSCOW, May 23 (RIA Novosti) - A first deputy Russian prime minister said Wednesday the Litvinenko-Lugovoi poisoning scandal will not affect Russian-British relations.
British prosecutors charged Andrei Lugovoi, an ex-security officer turned businessman, with poisoning a former FSB officer and Kremlin critic, Alexander Litvinenko, in November, and demanded his extradition Tuesday. Russia ruled out extradition saying it ran counter to its Constitution and that Lugovoi could only be tried in Russia.
"I do not see a link between the death of Litvinenko and the development of Russian-British relations," Sergei Ivanov, widely seen as President Vladimir Putin's successor, told a news conference.
Ivanov said Lugovoi's destiny would be decided by a Russian court and the Prosecutor General's Office.
"We have courts and the prosecutor's office, which are independent from the executive branch of power and will make an independent decision when they receive the case files [from Britain]," Ivanov said.
Litvinenko, who received UK citizenship a few weeks before his fatal radioactive poisoning November 1 last year, accused Russia's president of orchestrating his death, a charge that Putin dismissed as ridiculous.
Lugovoi denied any role in the murder, saying he was shocked by the bias of British prosecutors and promised sensational statements that would shatter attitudes to "certain persons of Russian extraction" in an apparent reference to fugitive oligarch Boris Berezovsky, who was acquainted with both Litvinenko and Lugovoi and was questioned by Russian investigators also looking into the poisoning.
Russian prosecutors have also unsuccessfully sought the extradition of Berezovsky, on fraud charges and most recently for trying to instigate a coup. London is also harboring dozens of people wanted in Russia, including Chechen separatist emissary Akhmed Zakayev who Russia considers a terrorist.
British authorities are meanwhile planning to obtain a broader European arrest warrant for Lugovoi and put him on the Interpol wanted list. And Litvinenko's widow, Marina, said Tuesday she had filed a suit against Russia with the European Court of Human Rights.
