Russia triggered a new spying row with Britain last night when a senior diplomat in Moscow was accused of working for British Intelligence.

The allegation against Chris Bowers, the British Embassy’s acting director of trade and investment, follows weeks of antagonism and growing tension between London and Moscow.

Interfax news agency quoted an unnamed source within Russia’s intelligence services, who claimed that Mr Bowers was a high-ranking secret service officer who had also worked under cover in the 1990s as a BBC reporter in Uzbekistan. “The activities of Christopher Bowers, a counsellor at the British Embassy in Russia, and probably, simultaneously a senior officer with British Intelligence, are giving rise to questions among Russian intelligence services,” the agency reported its source as saying.

It was claimed that Mr Bowers had been engaged in “suspicious” meetings with what it called Russia’s radical opposition and human rights activists from the North Caucasus, including Chechnya. An embassy spokesman confirmed that Mr Bowers was a diplomat responsible for trade and investment but declined to say more.

This week Gordon Brown used his first meeting with President Medvedev to confront Moscow over a list of British grievances. They include the failure to extradite the chief suspect in the murder in London of Alexander Litvinenko, amid fresh accusations linking Russia to his death.

Mr Brown also raised the threats to oil executives working for the Anglo-Russian oil giant TNK-BP in the power struggle between its four Russian shareholders and BP. Britain regards the threats, which were made by Russian state agencies and include a warning that some expatriates may lose their visas, as unjustified.

Separately, British security officials have voiced fears that Russia’s intelligence services may have flooded London with agents, and that Russia represents the third most serious threat facing Britain behind al-Qaeda terrorism and Iranian nuclear proliferation.

The Federal Security Service (FSB) in Moscow refused to comment last night on the naming of Mr Bowers.

However, the decision to single him out may be linked to the TNK-BP affair.

As the embassy’s senior trade official, Mr Bowers has been heavily engaged in dealing with the company. In March the FSB charged one of TNK-BP’s Russian employees with spying on behalf of foreign companies.

TNK-BP began in 2003 as a joint venture blessed by the Kremlin. It produces a quarter of BP’s oil output and last year posted a net profit of $5.7 billion. This year the Russian co-owners rebelled against BP, accusing the joint venture’s chief executive officer of playing mainly the hand of the British side.

Yesterday’s anonymous allegation against the diplomat came on the heels of a BBC Newsnight report in which an unnamed senior British security officer accused the Russian State of involvement in the killing of Mr Litvinenko with radioactive polonium-210 in 2006. The official said that Whitehall believed “there are very strong indications that it was a state action”.

The allegation infuriated the Kremlin because it came on the day of the Prime Minister’s first meeting with Mr Medvedev, at the G8 summit in Japan. Mr Medvedev had said that Russia was keen to improve relations, but wanted “corresponding steps” from Britain.

Yesterday Mr Brown told MPs that he had made clear to Mr Medvedev “that the Litvinenko issue would not be closed. We have justice to do on the part of someone who was murdered on British soil and it is not an acceptable position to be where we are.”

Russia has refused to extradite Andrei Lugovoy, a former KGB officer, to stand trial in London for the murder of Mr Litvinenko. Mr Lugovoy, now a deputy in the Russian parliament, denies the charge and claims that he is being framed by British Intelligence. Britain reacted last year by expelling four Russian diplomats, and Moscow retaliated by ordering four envoys to leave the British Embassy.

Russian prosecutors are conducting their own investigation into Mr Litvinenko’s murder.

“The investigation has made significant progress and does not possess information that any intelligence service was involved in the crime,” the Investigative Committee of the Russian Prosecutor-General’s Office said in a statement on Tuesday.

Mr Brown said that he had also told Mr Medvedev that it was “completely unfair” for Russia to have forced two British Council offices to close in January.

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