KEY POINTS:
LONDON - Seven staff working in a London hotel bar, where former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko drank before he died from radiation poisoning, have been found to have traces of polonium 210, a public health agency said today.
The case has soured ties between Britain and Russia after Litvinenko, speaking on his death bed, accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of ordering his assassination.
"Preliminary results received from seven members of staff working in The Pine Bar of the Millennium Hotel on November 1 show that they appear to have been exposed to low levels of polonium 210," the Health Protection Agency said.
"There is no health risk in the short term and in the long term the risk is judged to be very small on the basis of initial tests," it said.
Litvinenko met Russian businessman Dimitry Kovtun and fellow ex-KGB spy Andrei Lugovoy at the Pine Bar on November 1, the day he fell ill. He died from poisoning from the radioactive isotope polonium 210 on November 23.
Kovtun and Lugovoy are now undergoing treatment in a Moscow hospital for radiation contamination.
Russian prosecutors on Thursday launched their own investigation into Litvinenko's death and also opened a criminal case into what they said was the attempted murder of Kovtun.
British detectives and Russian investigators interviewed Kovtun in Moscow on Thursday.
- REUTERS
