UK police treating Litvinenko poisoning as murder

LONDON, Dec 6 (Reuters) British police said today they were now treating the case of poisoned former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko as murder.

''Detectives investigating the death of Alexander Litvinenko have reached the stage where it is felt appropriate to treat it as an allegation of murder,'' Scotland Yard police headquarters said in a statement.

British police in Moscow investigating the poisoning of the ex-KGB spy questioned today a Russian who met him the day he fell ill.

Britain's embassy in Moscow also announced traces of radiation had been found on its premises, but said they were too small to be harmful and declined to say if the radiation was polonium 210 -- the formula found in Litvinenko's body.

Litvinenko, a fierce critic of President Vladimir Putin, began complaining of feeling ill on Nov. 1. He died three weeks later from radiation poisoning.

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