Diplomatic crisis between Europe and Vladimir Putin’s Russia

by admin
November 26th, 2006

In a gathering diplomatic crisis between Europe and Vladimir Putin’s Russia, Britain has officially asked the Kremlin for help in investigating the mysterious and extraordinary death by radioactive poisoning of former KGB spy-turned-dissident-turned-British citizen Alexander Litvinenko.Litvinenko’s painful death on Thursday in a central London hospital, allegedly by a massive dose of the highly radioactive and toxic material polonium 210, has set off a full counter-terrorism police investigation across the British capital with traces of the element found across several locations in the city, sparking public health fears.

Britain’s heavyweight Cobra committee, the Downing Street crisis team, met several times in emergency session over growing fears that Litvinenko’s murder could mean an assassination squad is targeting Russian dissidents in London.The metalloid polonium is extremely rare in nature. It occurs in trace amounts in uranium ore and is very difficult to obtain other than from a nuclear installation, scientists said. Experts warned of serious security implications if radioactive material is found to have been smuggled into Britain. Polonium 210, one of 25 polonium isotopes, emits alpha particles, which tear apart the genetic machinery of cells, killing them outright or causing them to mutate into tumour-producing forms. The particles spread in the body and first destroy fast-growing cells, like those in bone marrow and hair. Production of the “significant quantities” of the isotope found in Litvinenko’s body by the British health protection agency would require a nuclear reactor in which the metallic element bismuth could be bombarded with neutrons. British nuclear scientist Peter Zimmerman has said polonium has never before been used by intelligence agencies or anyone else as a murder weapon.

In a sequence worthy of a James Bond film, polonium 210 is being described as the perfect poison because it is impossible to detect using a Geiger counter as, unlike better known radioactive elements, it does not emit gamma rays.Until he died from heart failure, doctors had failed to pinpoint the cause of the symptoms that reduced the fanatically-fit 43-year-old Litvinenko to a “ghost” with a crippled immune system and a useless liver. A post-mortem will not be carried out until it is deemed safe for London hospital staff.