Russia raps UK over Litvinenko murder inquiry

MOSCOW, March 12 (Reuters) Russian prosecutors investigating the poisoning in Britain of former spy Alexander Litvinenko today accused British officials of failing provide the appropriate cooperation.

Britain is investigating Litvinenko's death but Russia has launched a parallel criminal inquiry and has asked for clearance to interview dozens of people in London, including Russian emigres wanted for trial in Moscow.

Russia's Deputy Prosecutor-General Alexander Zvyagintsev said requests for British cooperation had been slowed down by officials from Scotland Yard, the Crown Prosecution Service and the Home Office.

''Unfortunately, too much time is being taken up with technical and procedural questions and I hope they can be resolved faster,'' Zvaygintsev said in an interview with the Izvestia newspaper.

Russia sent a group of detectives to London this year and another team could soon go again to London, he said.

But Zvaygintsev said Russia had not been given the same level of cooperation as British detectives received when they travelled to Moscow last year to question witnesses.

''When last year the English asked us to let them come here we did not insist on the observation of some of the formalities ... Do we not have the right to expect similar cooperation?'' he said.

Litvinenko died in a London hospital on November. 23 last year after being poisoned with a lethal dose of polonium 210, a radioactive isotope.

He issued a deathbed statement accusing Russian President Vladimir Putin of ordering his murder. The Kremlin has dismissed the allegations as nonsense. The affair though, has soured relations between Moscow and London.

Zvaygintsev said Russian detectives would like to question more than one hundred people and inspect several buildings in Britain.

He said among those he would like to question are Russian tycoon Boris Berezovsky, who is wanted in Russia on corruption charges and has been granted asylum in Britain. The dead spy was a Berezovsky associate.

REUTERS MS RK1802