Russian spies deny poisoning role

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LONDON, England (CNN) -- While doctors scrambled to determine how a former Russian spy and prominent Kremlin critic was poisoned Wednesday, the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service again denied its involvement, arguing "such steps are not in our interest," a Russian official told Russian news agency Interfax.

"Russia and the United Kingdom have a relationship of trust and mutual understanding," Russia's Federal Security Service, FSB spokesman Sergei Ivanov said, Interfax reported. "These relations became even stronger during the G8 summit in St. Petersburg."

Ivanov added "naturally we are sorry for what has happened to him," and wished Alexander Litvinenko a "speedy recovery," according to Interfax.

Meanwhile doctors have discounted suspicions that the toxic metal thallium was used, hospital officials said Tuesday and Litvinenko remained in serious condition at University College Hospital in London, where he has been treated since Friday. He says he was poisoned after meeting with an Italian who claimed to have information connecting the Russian government with the October slaying of a frequent critic, journalist Anna Politkovskaya.

He met his contact at a London sushi restaurant in early November and fell violently ill within hours. Doctors say he is at risk of heart and kidney failure and may need a bone marrow transplant if he survives.

His sudden illness has led Litvinenko and his friends to suggest that Putin's government was behind the poisoning, an allegation Moscow denies.

Litvinenko was once a colonel in Russia's Federal Security Service, the FSB. He has been a defender of the Chechen separatists who have battled Moscow's rule for much of the past 15 years, and has accused the government of orchestrating the bombings of a string of apartment buildings as a pretext for its 1999 invasion of the breakaway republic.

He has suffered from dehydration and heart complications, and his hair has fallen out. That combination of symptoms led Dr. Paul Henry, a clinical toxicologist who has examined Litvinenko, to say Monday that the cause may have been radioactive thallium -- a heavy metal sometimes used in cardiac tests.

Henry called thallium -- which looks like sugar or salt, dissolves in water and has no taste or odor -- "an ideal homicidal poison." But Dr. Amit Nathwani, a consulting physician on Litvinenko's case, said Tuesday that doctors have found other evidence steering them away from thallium.

"His symptoms are slightly odd for thallium poisoning, and the levels of thallium we were able to detect are not the kind of levels you'd see in toxicity," Nathwani said. He said the substance could not be ruled out completely, "but it is also quite possible that we may never find the ultimate cause."

Litvinenko's treatment is likely to take "weeks and months," the doctor said.

The ex-spy left Russia in 2000, accusing his former agency of planning to kill opponents of Russian President Vladimir Putin, and he recently blamed the Kremlin for Politkovskaya's death.

Scotland Yard is investigating his poisoning, and Litvinenko has spent more than 15 hours talking with detectives during his hospitalization, a friend, Alex Goldfarb, said.

Moscow recently extended government powers to deal with "extremists," he said -- "So all of this is legal under Russian law."

Britain is already at odds with Russia over a spy scandal earlier this year when Russia accused Britain of planting a rock as a listening device near the Kremlin. But in an extraordinary denial Monday, Ivanov told Interfax that Moscow had not carried out any "physical liquidation of unwelcome personalities" since the Soviet-era killing of Stepan Bandera, a Ukrainian nationalist leader, in 1959.

"Any allegations against Russia are unconvincing, to say the least," he said.

Ivanov suggested the culprit lay among Litvinenko's associates in London. And others say Litvinenko had underworld connections that might have been behind his poisoning.

"He was working amongst terrorists, against gangsters, so he lived in that world," said Ivor Gaber, a political analyst at London's Goldsmith University. "He was very aware of the enemies he made in his professional life, but of course, he was now making an enemy of the Russian state."

CNN Correspondents Paula Newton and Matthew Chance contributed to this report.

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