The Government has decided against making an official approach to Moscow about the suspected involvement of the Russian intelligence services in the murder of Alexander Litvinenko, Whitehall sources told The Times yesterday.

“The view being taken is that this is a criminal matter, not an intelligence issue, and there is no intention on the part of the Government to focus on anything else in dealing with the Russians over this case,” a Foreign and Commonwealth Office official said.

During the police investigation into the killing, security sources told The Times that the case appeared to have all the hallmarks of a state-sanctioned assassination. But sources acknowledged yesterday that there was a gap between what was suspected and what could be viewed as “a provable trail”.

Patrick Mercer, the former Tory spokesman on homeland security, said that the Government was ignoring “the wider implications”. He said: “What worries me is that the Government seems to be trying to treat this as an isolated incident of criminal behaviour but steps need to be taken to ensure that this type of action does not happen again.”

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Multimedia

• Full video of interview with Marina Litvinenko

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

Oleg Gordievsky, a career KGB officer who worked as a double agent for MI6 and defected to Britain in 1985, said that he was “150 per cent sure” that the Russian intelligence services were behind the targeting of Litvinenko.

“There had to be a sophisticated organisation involved in such an operation, and after the death of Litvinenko a massive disinformation campaign was launched in Europe and the United States and that, too, could only have been state-sponsored,” Mr Gordievsky said.

Mr Mercer said: “I think it’s important that the Government confronts this wider issue, if only to put down a marker against any further activity of this kind.”

Scotland Yard said it was keeping open its file on the Litvinenko case but added that it would pursue its investigation into the murder only if new evidence emerged. A spokeswoman for the Crown Prosecution Service made clear that there would be no move to seek the prosecution of any individuals other than the one man now accused of Litvinenko’s death – Andrei Lugovoy, the former officer with the Russian federal security service, the FSB. She said: “We took the decision [about Lugovoy] on the basis of the full file of evidence given to us by the police.”

The Foreign Office official said that there was no wish “to blur the criminal case” by focusing on “peripheral issues”, adding: “Lugovoy used to serve in the FSB and so did Alexander Litvinenko. But that’s not the issue. What is the issue is that a British citizen [Litvinenko had been granted British citizenship] was killed while going about his normal business in this country.”

However, Mr Gordievsky said: “The polonium-210 radioactive isotopes . . . were worth $10 million. No private individual could have been involved in this on his own.”

He added: “The key individual was the third man who joined Lugovoy in London. He was the professional Russian intelligence officer.”

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