MOSCOW, July 23 (RIA Novosti) - Russian prosecutors proposed Monday that the U.K. request Russia launch criminal proceedings against businessman Andrei Lugovoi, the key suspect in the murder of former Russian security service officer Alexander Litvinenko.
"We propose sending to the Prosecutor General's Office a request to launch criminal proceedings with all the available documentation attached," Deputy Russian Prosecutor General Alexander Zvyagintsev told journalists.
He said Russian prosecutors are ready to help Britain in the case, and that Russia cooperates with foreign states in criminal prosecutions of people accused of committing crimes outside the country.
Zvyagintsev also called Britain's response to Moscow's refusal to extradite Lugovoi "ungrounded and politically motivated."
Russia expelled four British diplomats last Thursday, imposed visa restrictions, and suspended cooperation with the U.K. in fighting terrorism, following similar measures by London, amid the bitter row over Moscow's refusal to extradite Lugovoi, charged with poisoning Litvinenko in London last November.
Lugovoi, a former Kremlin bodyguard, denies the charges, and Russia says its Constitution does not permit the extradition of its nationals.
"Britain is demanding that Russia change its Constitution for the extradition of a single individual," Zvyagintsev said, adding that there has been no such precedent yet, and that no country has yet changed its constitution to resolve such an issue.
"The calls to circumvent the requirements of the Constitution are all the more inadequate. The British side cares little about the supremacy of law," the deputy prosecutor general said.
Zvyagintsev said Russia's law enforcement authorities would authorize the arrest of any person found to have committed the crime.
A deputy head of the Prosecutor General's office's department for high-priority cases, Andrei Mayorov, on Monday called into question London's objectivity in its investigation.
"The materials submitted do not testify to objectivity," Mayorov said, adding that "a political motive" could be traced in investigation.
Litvinenko, an outspoken Kremlin critic, defected to the U.K. in 2000 and received British citizenship shortly before his death. He died in London in November 2006. In his deathbed note, he accused President Vladimir Putin of orchestrating his murder, an allegation the Kremlin dismissed as ridiculous.
No official statement on the reasons of Litvinenko's death has been published yet by U.K. authorities, but doctors said traces of radioactive polonium-210 were found in his body.
Mayorov said the U.K.'s extradition request actually accuses the Russian Federal Security Service of killing its former officer, although according to Russian prosecutors' information, no polonium traces were found in many of the places visited by Lugovoi and his business partner Dmitry Kovtun, also a suspect in the case.
Mayorov also said Kovtun and Lugovoi could have been contaminated with polonium from Litvinenko, who could have been previously poisoned by somebody else.
"Either they were contaminated from Litvinenko or from contaminated objects. They themselves became victims of poisoning," he said.
In an interview with Russian business daily Kommersant published Monday, British ambassador Tony Brenton said the Russian-U.K. conflict was far from over.
He said Russia could "find a way around this impediment, given the serious and unprecedented nature of this murder," but suggested that it does not in fact want to do so.
