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Dead spy's father blames Kremlin

Hasan Suroor

LONDON: As mystery continued to surround the death of Alexander Litvinenko, a former Russian spy who died of suspected poisoning in a London hospital on Thursday, his father alleged that he was killed by a "little, tiny nuclear bomb, so small that you couldn't see it.''

Walter Litvinenko, who flew in from Russia, pointed an accusing finger at the Kremlin saying: "People who killed him have big nuclear bombs and missiles and those people should not be trusted... .If you just let it go, if we go about our daily lives as usual, this regime will get at all of us.''

Meanwhile, the discovery of a radioactive material, polonium-210, in Litvinenko's body and at a sushi bar and a hotel he visited the day he fell ill prompted a public health scare. Experts said that symptoms of polonium poisoning may not be detected for weeks. It was an "effective and convenient poison'' and, once ingested, it was hard to detect. Even a few milligrams could prove lethal. The Health Protection Agency, however, said there was no cause for panic.

People who had simply come into contact with Litvinenko or visited the restaurant and hotel where traces of polonium had been found were not at risk. To calm public fears, the National Health Service set up a hotline for advice.

Unprecedented

Security agencies, investigating the case, described the circumstances of Litvinenko's death as "unprecedented.'' They said they were trying to establish the source where polonium-210 might have come from.

According to scientists it was unlikely that the material came from Britain. They said one possibility was that it might have been obtained from a nuclear installation.

"I suspect it was secreted in from the East. It is not available in these areas in a form conducive to poisoning,'' Chris Lloyd, a radiation expert at the Environment Agency, told The Guardian.

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