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Russian investigators said they have begun questioning in the radiation poisoning death of former Russian agent Alexander Litvinenko, a case that has left radiation traces from a London soccer stadium to the British Embassy in Moscow, the Associated Press news agency reports.

One of the figures to be questioned is former Russian agent Andrei Lugovoi, seen by some as the key to the case, which British police on Wednesday said they were treating as murder.

Together with colleagues from Scotland Yard, Russian investigators met Wednesday with a security service agent turned businessman who saw Litvinenko on the day he is believed to have fallen ill with the polonium-210 poisoning that eventually killed him. The Interfax news agency quoted lawyer Andrei Romashov as saying that Dmitry Kovtun had testified Tuesday and Wednesday.

Kovtun was one of a trio of Russian businessmen whose desire for deals and love of soccer had taken them to London on Nov. 1. He and the others say they met briefly with Litvinenko at a hotel bar before leaving for a match between CSKA Moscow and Arsenal at the Emirates Stadium.

The stadium is where Boris Berezovsky, the flamboyant, fiercely anti-Kremlin Russian tycoon, routinely collects his friends and associates in a private box. Litvinenko joined Berezovsky’s emigre circle after fleeing Russia in 2000.

The stadium was added to the map of clues on Wednesday. Katherine Lewis, spokeswoman for Britain’s Health Protection Agency, said faint levels of polonium-210 had been found at two locations there. The radiation was “barely detectable” and posed no public health risk, she said.

Traces of radiation have been found at 13 sites including the hotel where the soccer fans met with Litvinenko, the sushi bar where he went afterward to meet with an Italian contact and three British Airways planes that ply the London-Moscow route.

The British Embassy in Moscow said Wednesday that experts had found minor traces of radiation there, too, but they presented no health risk to the public. The embassy did not specify where the radiation was found or what its source might be.

Kovtun and Lugovoi visited the embassy last month to discuss the Litvinenko case with embassy officials.

Romashov said that his own client, Lugovoi, had not yet been questioned. The Prosecutor-General’s Office confirmed in a brief statement that it had started questioning, but did not say with whom.

In comments to the Russian channel NTV, Romashov said Scotland Yard investigators told Lugovoi that he would be questioned as a witness, not as a suspect, possibly Thursday or Friday.

Lugovoi, a former security service agent whose business interests include a share of a large beverage and wine plant in Russia and security services, has been at the center of media attention, and ABC News quoted an unnamed British official as saying he was British investigators’ “prime suspect.” He is also among the soccer fans whom Litvinenko met on Nov. 1.

However, a British official told The Associated Press on Wednesday that “Lugovoi is one of many people investigators are looking to question but I wouldn’t call him a suspect at this point.” The official requested anonymity because he is not authorized to speak to the press.

Lugovoi used to head the security detail at ORT, the Russian television network that Berezovsky controlled before he fell out with President Vladimir Putin and went into self-exile to London to avoid what he claims are politically motivated money-laundering charges. Lugovoi served a brief jail term in 2002 for allegedly helping an executive of Aeroflot airlines, then also tied with Berezovsky, to escape pretrial detention.

Lugovoi said Litvinenko had contacted him from London about a year ago with business-related proposals, and that they had met intermittently in London since then.

He traveled to London three times in the month before Litvinenko’s death and met with Litvinenko four times, according to Russian media.

Romashov, Lugovoi’s lawyer, denied his client was a suspect.

Alexander Goldfarb, a friend of Litvinenko’s, said he, too, doubted Lugovoi was the killer.

“I frankly doubt that he was the hit man because hit men are usually people hiding in the dark,” Goldfarb told the AP. “I think it’s one of his associates, I think he was used unawares. … Now his life is in danger because he knows a lot.”

Kovtun, the man who reportedly was questioned on Wednesday, told Ekho Moskvy radio last month that Lugovoi had introduced him to Litvinenko in mid-October in London, where he had business interests.

He and Lugovoi have known each other since their days together at a military academy. He said he was a consultant helping Western companies penetrate the Russian market, and that Litvinenko had brought him and Lugovoi to visit two major British companies. He did not name the firms. He also said he and Lugovoi had had dinner with Litvinenko in Chinatown on Oct. 16 or 17.

The only other time he saw Litvinenko, he said, was on Nov. 1, before the soccer match.

The case has further strained already tense relations between Russia and Britain, which infuriated the Kremlin by giving asylum to Berezovsky and Chechen rebel envoy Akhmed Zakayev in addition to Litvinenko. Diplomatic pressure on Russia appeared to be growing, with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Jacques Chirac jointly urging Russia on Tuesday to help clear up the mystery.

Russian security analyst Pavel Felgengauer told Associated Press Television News that in spite of Russian investigators’ participation in the question, “Right now the official position of the Russian authorities is full denial.”

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