MOSCOW—International police agency Interpol is helping coordinate the investigation into the poisoning death of former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko, with a trail now running through Germany, Russia and Britain.
The head of Interpol's Russian office said on Tuesday the 186-country organisation had been asked to improve the flow of information between the three countries, which have launched their own probes into Litvinenko's death.
Litvinenko died in a London hospital on Nov. 23 after exposure to radioactive polonium 210. In a statement associates released after his death, he accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of ordering his killing. The Kremlin denies involvement.
"Interpol will be called on, and is already being called on, for the speedy exchange of information between various countries," Itar-Tass news agency quoted Interpol's Russian office chief Timur Lakhonin as saying.
A spokeswoman for the French-based Interpol noted the case was international and "Interpol can therefore offer and provide international assistance between the countries, as and when required."
The three investigations have sent British investigators to Russia to question people who met Litvinenko, and Russian newspapers have reported that Russian prosecutors might be preparing to fly to London to conduct interviews.
A German prosecutor has said Russian businessman Dmitry Kovtun, who met Litvinenko on the day he fell ill and who is now in hospital in Moscow, could be a possible suspect in the case. Kovtun denies any part in Litvinenko's poisoning.
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Gerald Kirchner of the German Radiation Protection Agency said four people feared to have been contaminated with polonium 210 through contact with Kovtun were unlikely to suffer health problems.
The four were Kovtun's ex-wife, her current partner and their two children. Kovtun spent the night of Oct. 28 at her Hamburg apartment, where traces of the radioactive substance were found.
"The contamination in the apartment is roughly equal to what a smoker would be exposed to if he smoked several packs of cigarettes or strong cigars," Kirchner told German radio.
The Hamburg police said they were sending urine samples from the four to a special laboratory in Dresden to determine whether they had polonium 210 contamination inside their bodies.
NDR radio reported that they also said they had requested help from their Moscow counterparts in connection to information about Kovtun's stay in Germany between Oct. 28 and Nov. 1. At the weekend they said earlier requests had received no response.
Kovtun has been in a Moscow hospital with symptoms of radiation poisoning but on Tuesday he told Russia's First Channel he was feeling better and would be leaving soon.
"Doctors say the situation is stable now and I'm getting better," he told the television station by telephone. "I think I will stay in hospital another week or 10 days."
Andrei Sidelnikov, an oppositon activist, told Reuters in Moscow that Litvinenko seemed fine when they met in London two days before he was taken ill.
"We talked about everything, about politics in Russia, there was a discussion about the case of the murder of (journalist) Anna Politkovskya... He was expecting some documents about this," Sidelnikov said.
He did not know what kind of documents but said they "could confirm the involvement of certain people in this killing."
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