Britain and Russia were set on a diplomatic collision course today after the Crown Prosecution Service announced that it had decided to charge a former KGB officer with the murder of Alexander Litvinenko, the exiled dissident who died of radiation poisoning in London last November.

Minutes after Sir Ken MacDonald, Director of Public Prosecutions, announced the murder charge against Andrei Lugovoy, Russia's ambassador to London was summoned to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to be told that it expected his Government's full co-operation in his extradition.

Tony Blair's official spokesman backed that up, saying that "murder is murder."

But the response from Moscow was a resounding "nyet". Marina Gridneva, a spokeswoman for the Russian prosecutor's office, said: "In accordance with Russian law, citizens of Russia cannot be turned over to foreign states."

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BACKGROUND

• Lies and the spies: I must have justice

• Shadowy ex-KGB major takes cover

• Of course the Russians did it. They’re the experts

• The Litvinenko File

• Litvinenko was told that he was marked for death

Related Links

• Comment: Lugovoy charge will cause huge fallout

• Full CPS statement on Litvinenko killing

Litvinenko, another former KGB officer who became an outspoken critic of the Kremlin, was poisoned with a cup of tea laced with the radioactive isotope polonium-210 on November 1 at a hotel in Mayfair. Wasting away and bald because of the effects of radiation sickness, he died at University College Hospital three weeks later.

Sir Ken said that Mr Lugovoy - who took tea with Litvinenko at the Millennium Hotel - had been identified as a suspect in a Metropolitan Police dossier on the murder handed over in January. Further inquiries were ordered, which have now been completed.

"I have concluded that the evidence sent to us by police is sufficient to charge Andrei Lugovoy with the murder of Mr Litvinenko by deliberate poisoning," Sir Ken said in a statement delivered to reporters this morning.

"I have further concluded that a prosecution of this case would clearly be in the public interest. I have instructed CPS lawyers to take immediate steps to seek the early extradition of Andrei Lugovoy from Russia to the United Kingdom, so that he may be charged with murder - and be brought swiftly before a court in London to be prosecuted for this extraordinarily grave crime."

This afternoon, Mr Lugovoy dismissed the charge as "politically motivated". "I did not kill Litvinenko, have nothing to do with his death and can prove with facts my distrust of the so-called evidence collected by Britain’s justice system," he told the Itar-Tass news agency.

But the decision to press ahead with charges was welcomed by Litvinenko's widow, Marina, who met Yuri Fedotov, the Russian Ambassador to London, and pressed him to ask his government to cooperate with the extradition request to prove that there was no Russian state involvement in the murder. Mrs Litvinenko's lawyer has taken up the case with the European Court of Human Rights, alleging potential breaches by the Russian Government.

Mrs Litvinenko said: "It is important to me that my husband didn’t die in vain and that the perpetrators of his murder are brought to justice in the UK. It is also important for British people to see that those who carried out this attack on British soil are brought to justice and to see that they are protected from what people see as state terrorism."

The CPS move is likely to lead to a further deterioration in Anglo-Russian relations - especially since Mr Lugovoy, a KGB colleague of Litvinenko, is thought to have maintained close relations with the FSB, the KGB's successor organisation.

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