The prosecutor also confirmed that Lugovoi has been hospitalized. Chaika said the British officers could be allowed to visit Lugovoi and listen to his interrogation by Russian prosecutors, if doctors permit it.

"He's being treated in a hospital," the prosecutor said. "Everything will depend on the doctors' opinion. If doctors allow a conversation with him, he will be questioned."

However, ABC reported that the British detectives were told they could not see Lugovoi. It quoted the British official as saying the Russian government was obstructing the investigation.

Lugovoi told the ITAR-Tass news agency that he was undergoing tests for possible radiation contamination, and the results would be ready in a few days.

He said he was prepared to answer the British investigators' questions.

"I intend to fully satisfy their interest and am waiting for an invitation from the law enforcement organs," he was quoted as saying. "Once I give all the necessary testimony to the law enforcement organs, I intend to publicly put an end to (speculation) about my supposed involvement in this story."

Lugovoi went to London in the month before Litvinenko's death and met with Litvinenko four times, according to Russian media. He said Litvinenko had contacted him about a year ago with some business proposals, and that they had met intermittently in London since then.

Chaika refused to say how many people British investigators hoped would be questioned in the case.

He said Mikhail Trepashkin, a former security service officer who is serving a four-year prison sentence for divulging state secrets, was not part of the initial British request and that British investigators would not be allowed to talk to him.

Trepashkin has claimed in a letter that he had warned Litvinenko several years ago about a government-sponsored death squad that intended to kill him and other Kremlin opponents.

Chaika dismissed the allegation, adding, "we aren't obliged to react to any stupidity."

He also shrugged off questions about the possible questioning of officials from the Federal Security Service, a KGB successor agency which some observers have accused of involvement in Litvinenko's death.

"Why should FSB officials be questioned? Why not question everyone here?" Chaika said, using the Russian acronym for the agency.

He also rejected allegations that the polonium-210 that poisoned Litvinenko could have been smuggled from Russia.

"It couldn't happen here," he said, adding that two Russian plants mentioned in the British media as possible sources of the polonium-210 do not produce it.

"It's all sheer nonsense," Chaika said of the allegations.

The case has strained already tense relations between Russia and Britain, which infuriated the Kremlin by giving asylum to Russian tycoon and Kremlin critic Boris Berezovsky, Chechen rebel envoy Akhmed Zakayev and Litvinenko, a former Federal Security Service officer.

Chaika dismissed suggestions that Russia could trade suspects in Litvinenko's murder for Berezovsky and Zakayev. He said British authorities, who have rejected Russian requests for their extradition, eventually would have to change their decision.

1

2