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The British government sought on Tuesday to limit the information it would disclose at a planned inquest into the death of Alexander V. Litvinenko, a former officer in the K.G.B. who succumbed to radiation poisoning in London more than six years ago. The coroner hearing the case said that it may now be postponed. “Due to the complexity of the investigation which necessarily precedes the hearings,” the coroner, Sir Robert Owen, said, “it may not be possible to adhere” to the planned May 1 start date for the hearings. The inquest would be the first — and probably the only...

RAMALLAH, West Bank (AP) - The remains of former Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat will be exhumed Tuesday as part of a renewed investigation into his death, a Palestinian investigator said Saturday. Arafat died in November 2004 in a French military hospital, a month after suddenly falling ill. Palestinian officials claim he was poisoned by Israel, but have not presented evidence. Israel has denied such allegations. Earlier this year, the detection of a lethal radioactive substance in biological traces on Arafat's clothing sparked a new investigation. Tests were inconclusive, and experts said they need to check his remains to learn more....

RAMALLAH, West Bank - The Palestinian president cleared the way Wednesday for a possible autopsy on Yasser Arafat's remains, following a request from his widow after a Swiss lab said it found elevated levels of a lethal radioactive isotope on the longtime Palestinian leader's belongings. The developments have reignited a storm of speculation over what killed Arafat, who died on Nov. 11, 2004 at the age of 75 at a military hospital outside Paris after decades of fighting with Israel. Arafat's widow, Suha, who rejected an autopsy at the time of his death, said she wanted one done now in...

Palestinians leaders agreed Wednesday to exhume the body of Yasser Arafat after a television documentary suggested that he had been assassinated while being treated in a Paris hospital. Arafat was 75 and had long been ill when he slipped into a coma and died on Nov. 11, 2004. He had been suffering from a mysterious illness. The cause of the death was never determined and French medical officials would not release details of his illness because of privacy laws. The medical report was given to his family. The television network al Jazeera broadcast a documentary this week in which a...

WASHINGTON — Former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger said Sunday that Russia's president-elect Vladimir Putin is a "patriot" who could turn out to be a constructive partner with the United States on certain issues. Kissinger said Putin, who was elected to a third term as president in an election marred by irregularities and protests against his rule, "is not anti-western." "He is, above all, a Russian patriot who feels humiliated by the experience of the 1990s, which were in the most formative period of his career," Kissinger said in an interview with CNN, referring to the 1991 collapse of...

French President Nicolas Sarkozy was discharged Monday from the hospital where he spent the night after collapsing while jogging. Doctors said his illness was due to heat and overwork and ordered the 54-year-old to rest but prescribed no further medical treatment, his office said. Sarkozy, dressed in a dark suit and tie, walked hand-in-hand with his wife, Carla, from Val de Grace military hospital to his car. He smiled and shook hands with white-clad medical personnel but declined any comment. Medical tests Monday on Sarkozy's heart showed no signs of irregular heartbeat and no long term consequences for the president's...

It's what every tyrant needs and now, apparently, so does the President of Russia: a team of food tasters to check against the risk of poison in the kitchen. Dmitri Medvedev brought two with him for last week's European Union-Russia summit, sending them down into the kitchens of the grand Palais Sarde in the southern town of Nice - where they were officially described as "doctors". Startled French security officials revealed that everything the Russian president eats, drinks or tastes must be sampled first by his personal testers - even if it is the finest French cuisine. "A paranoid Medvedev...

Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili said he will not leave Georgia because he fears Russia would prevent him from returning home, in an interview with a German newspaper. ''If I leave Georgia then the Russians will close our airspace and prevent me from returning home,'' Saakashvili was quoted as saying by the German daily Bild. For this reason the Georgian leader said he would not attend an emergency European Union summit in Brussels on Monday called to discuss the crisis in the Caucasus, according to the newspaper. He said that he wanted from the summit a ''clear commitment from the EU...

Prime suspect in Litvinenko case to run for Russian parliament Posted on : 2007-09-16 | Author : DPA News Category : Europe Moscow - Andrei Lugovi, the prime suspect in the murder case of Kremlin opponent Alexander Litvinenko, is to run for Russian parliament (Duma) as number 2 on the Liberal Democratic Party (LDPR) list, Duma Deputy Speaker Vladimir Zhirinovsky announced Sunday. According to the Interfax news agency, Lugovoi agreed to run in the election with the LDPR, led by the nationalist Zhirinovsky. Former Russian secret service agent Lugovoi is accused by Britain's Scotland Yard of administering a lethal dose...

An assassin sprayed a deadly poison into Alexander Litvinenko's tea, the man who served the victim and his killer has revealed.In the first eyewitness account of the moment the former Russian spy was consigned to death, Norberto Andrade describes how, as he tried to serve drinks to Mr Litvinenko and the former KGB agents Andrei Lugovoi and Dmitry Kovtun, he was deliberately distracted in order, he claims, to allow the killer to add radioactive polonium to a pot of green tea. Mr Andrade, 67, the head barman of the Pine Bar at the Millennium Hotel in London, says investigators later...

FROM the day Alexander V. Litvinenko, a former K.G.B. officer, died of polonium poisoning in London last November, officials in Russia treated the investigation of his death as if it were simply a matter of bad public relations. They dismissed accusations of Russian involvement as nonsense fabricated by President Vladimir V. Putin’s enemies. Britain last week punctured Russia’s strategy. A decision by the Crown Prosecution Service to accuse another former K.G.B. officer of the murder and demand his extradition pushed Russia out of the international court of public opinion and into the international court of law. If recent history is...

Britain to charge former KGB agent for Litvinenko murder (Roundup) May 22, 2007, 14:43 GMT London/Moscow - Britain said Tuesday it would press murder charges against a former KGB agent accused of the 'deliberate poisoning' of ex-spy Alexander Litvinenko with a radioactive agent in London last November. The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) said there was sufficient evidence to bring murder charges against Andrei Lugovoy, a Moscow- based businessman who met Litvinenko at a London hotel on the day he was believed to have been given an fatal dose of polonium-210 in a cup of tea. But the authorities in Moscow...

Excerpt - A Moscow based man is to be charged in connection with the murder of the former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko. The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) has said it will ask for the extradition of a former KGB agent Andrei Lugovoy. At a news conference Director of Public Prosecutions Sir Ken Macdonald said: " I have today concluded that the evidence given to us by the police is sufficient to charge Andrei Lugovoy with the murder of Mr Litvinenko by deliberate poisoning. "I have instructed CPS lawyers to take immediate steps to seek the early extradition of Andrei Lugovoy...

MOSCOW - Former President Boris Yeltsin, who engineered the final collapse of the Soviet Union and pushed Russia to embrace democracy and a market economy, died Monday. He was 76. Kremlin spokesman Alexander Smirnov confirmed Yeltsin's death, and Russian news agencies cited Sergei Mironov, head of the presidential administration's medical center, as saying the former president died Monday of heart failure at the Central Clinical Hospital. ADVERTISEMENT Although Yeltsin pushed Russia to embrace democracy and a market economy, many of its citizens will remember him mostly for presiding over the country's steep decline. Mikhail Gorbachev, the last Soviet president, summed...

Scotland Yard detectives are to issue arrest warrants against three former KGB officers suspected of poisoning ex-Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko. Police have told sources close to Mr Litvinenko's widow Marina that they intend to lay charges of murder and poisoning against the men, who met the victim three weeks before his death in London. The move will damage the already strained relationship between Downing Street and the Kremlin, which is almost certain to block any request for the men's arrest and extradition. Warrants are expected to be issued against Andrei Lugovoy, Dmitri Kovtun and Vyacheslav Sokolenko within the next few...

ATHENS, Greece Mar 16, 2007 (AP)— Health inspectors seized more than 200 pounds of bad meat from a restaurant several hours before Russian President Vladimir Putin dined there with the leaders of Greece and Bulgaria, a state hygiene agency said Friday. The Hellenic Food Authority said it carried out the inspection early Wednesday at the luxury Dionysos restaurant under the ancient Acropolis before Putin's visit to Greece for the signing of a $1.2 billion oil pipeline deal. It said it seized 51 pounds of beef, 168 pounds of pork and pork cutlets, and 11 pounds of cheese croquettes, all considered...

*Litvinenko 'did not have to flee' *Reporters told of crimminal oligarchs Alexander Litvinenko, the former spy who was murdered in London, was a thug and a thief who had no need to flee to Britain because he was so insignificant, President Putin said yesterday. Litvinenko had not been privy to state secrets and was dismissed from the Federal Security Service (FSB) “for beating people during detentions when he was a security service officer and for stealing explosives”. Mr Putin said: “He got a three-year suspended sentence and there was no need for him to flee. He had said all the...

The British government is preparing to demand the extradition of a Russian businessman to stand trial for the poisoning with polonium-210 of the former KGB officer Alexander Litvinenko. Senior Whitehall officials have told the Guardian that a Scotland Yard file on the murder which is about to be passed to the Crown Prosecution Service alleges that there is sufficient evidence against Andrei Lugovoi for the CPS to decide whether he should face prosecution. Read More: http://www.guardian.co.uk/frontpage/story/0,,1999204,00.html

British Police Identify Suspected Killer of Poisoned Ex-Russian Spy January 21, 2007 LONDON — Police have identified the man they believe poisoned Alexander Litvinenko. The suspected killer was captured on cameras at Heathrow as he flew into Britain to carry out the murder. Friends of the ex-spy say that the man was a hired killer, sent by the Kremlin, who vanished hours after administering a deadly dose of radioactive polonium-210 to Litvinenko. He arrived in London on a forged EU passport and reportedly slipped the poison into a cup of tea he made for Litvinenko in a London hotel room....

Police believe Litvinenko poisoned twice By David Harrison, Sunday Telegraph Last Updated: 12:29am GMT 07/01/2007 Alexander Litvinenko, the former Russian spy, was the victim of a "double hit" by the assassins who poisoned him with radioactive polonium-210, police believe. Traces of polonium have been found at Pescatori Detectives suspect that Mr Litvinenko, 44, who lived in north London, was first poisoned several days before he was attacked at a central London hotel on November 1. Officers had initially believed he was first poisoned that day at the Itsu sushi bar in Piccadilly, central London, when he met Mario Scaramella, an...