Litvinenko suspect made secret London trip -witness

LONDON, May 24 (Reuters) The chief suspect in the murder of Russian exile Alexander Litvinenko paid a previously unreported visit to London in the weeks before his poisoning with radioactive polonium, a witness in the case told Reuters.

The witness, Yuri Felshtinsky, said police initially thought he must be mistaken when he told them he had bumped into suspect Andrei Lugovoy on London's Piccadilly on the evening of October 12 last year.

Lugovoy, whom British authorities want to extradite from Moscow to face trial for murdering Litvinenko, has publicly acknowledged making three trips to the British capital last October, but only from Oct. 16 onwards.

Lugovoy, a former Soviet KGB agent who now runs a security business, could not be reached for comment in Moscow.

He denies any involvement in Litvinenko's death and officials in Moscow say he cannot be extradited because Russia's constitution forbids it.

The case of Litvinenko, another former KGB man who had become a vocal Kremlin critic and taken British citizenship, has sown diplomatic tensions between Britain and Russia.

Witness Felshtinsky had co-written a book with Litvinenko in which the pair accused Russian security services of staging a series of Moscow apartment bombings in 1999 and blaming them on Chechen rebels as a pretext for Russia to invade Chechnya.

CHANCE ENCOUNTER He said Lugovoy had told him at their chance meeting that he was on a business trip and they had spent several minutes chatting.

Police were surprised when Felshtinsky told them of the encounter during their investigation.

''They were quite sure I was wrong, because according to their information, Lugovoy was not in London on Oct. 12. He had no stamp in his passport, they had no records of any kind that he was in London on Oct. 12,'' Felshtinsky said.

Felshtinsky said he faxed information to the police, including a hotel bill and a bank receipt from a cash machine, to prove he was right about the date. ''I told them: 'Look guys, sorry, you have to go deeper because I met him on Oct. 12'.'' The US-based writer said the question of how Lugovoy had come to make a previously undetected visit to Britain was potentially significant.

''Number one, he might have a different passport, he might have several passports. Number two he might be travelling under a different name. Number three, police simply overlooked the fact.

Number four, somehow by chance he did not have an immigration stamp in his passport when he arrived,'' he said.

''The fact that they didn't know he was in London on Oct. 12 raises many questions.'' Litvinenko fell ill after meeting Lugovoy and his associate Dmitry Kovtun at a London hotel on November 1, but a BBC report in January said there may have been an earlier attempt to poison him in his favourite sushi restaurant, Itsu, when the three of them lunched there on October 16.

Litvinenko was also at the restaurant with an Italian contact on Nov. 1. But traces of polonium later found there were apparently at the seats where he had met the Russians more than two weeks earlier, the BBC said.

Scotland Yard police declined to comment on Felshtinsky's account.

''We certainly wouldn't discuss any information that's been given to us by a witness in that way. It's obviously very sensitive,'' a spokeswoman said.

Lugovoy said this week the British accusations against him were false and politically motivated, adding that he would give further details at a news conference soon that would ''cause a real sensation in Britain's public life.'' Reuters RN GC2045