Britain expels Russian diplomats amid Cold War clouds
Pastor Dale Morgan
Britain expels Russian diplomats amid Cold War clouds*
LONDON (AFP) - - Britain said Monday it will expel four Russian
diplomats over Moscow's refusal to extradite a key suspect in the murder
of ex agent Alexander Litvinenko, raising the spectre of a Cold
War-style standoff.
The expulsions, announced by Foreign Secretary David Miliband, were the
first in over a decade amid rising tensions between Moscow and the West
fuelled by Litvinenko's radioactive poisoning in London last November.
In fast-moving developments, Russia's foreign ministry responded warning
that the sanction measures announced by Britain "cannot but lead to the
most serious consequences in British-Russian relations as a whole," the
ministry's spokesman, Mikhail Kamynin, said in broadcast comments.
The last time Britain expelled Russian diplomats was in 1996, and
observers have recently warned the rift could escalate into a full-blown
Cold War-type style crisis.
"No one is seeking to be macho," Miliband told lawmakers, underlining
that Russia's refusal to extradite former KGB spy Andrei Lugovoi was
"extremely disappointing".
Britain will also consider a range of other measures including possible
consequences for visa arrangements, he said, while insisting that "this
is not an anti-Russian statement".
"This is about being firm and clear and proportionate and that is what
we are seeking to do," he said, adding: "This is a situation the
government has not sought and does not welcome."
The British announcement came after Russia confirmed to prosecutors here
last week its refusal to hand over Lugovoi over the killing of Litvinenko.
Authorities in Moscow have proposed putting Lugovoi on trial in Russia,
but British prosecutors believe that would not "meet standards of
impartiality and fairness", according to Prime Minister Gordon Brown's
office.
British prosecutors allege Lugovoi used a rare radioactive isotope,
Polonium 210, to poison Litvinenko, a former Russian intelligence agent
turned Kremlin critic, during a meeting over tea in a central London hotel.
Lugovoi, in a television interview broadcast Monday, said he is innocent
and renewed a claim that the British secret service tried to recruit him.
"My family and I were victims of a polonium attack in London," calling
the allegations against him "brazen lies... It's a convenient version
chosen by the British justice for an internal audience," he told Sky News.
News of the expulsions came as Russia and the United States are locked
in a heated dispute over missile defence, with Moscow accusing
Washington of provoking a "new arms race" by planning a missile shield
in central Europe.
At the weekend the Kremlin announced it had frozen Russia's
participation in a key post-Cold War pact with NATO, the Conventional
Forces in Europe (CFE) treaty, which limits troops and arms on the
continent.
Reacting in Moscow to the British announcement, former Soviet leader
Mikhail Gorbachev said Moscow's reaction would be "decisive and
appropriate", while a member of the Russian parliament warned Britain's
economy would suffer.
"From the economic point of view, the British side will suffer great
harm," said Andrei Kokoshin, a deputy from the ruling United Russia
party, quoted by the ITAR-TASS news agency.
Britain's expulsion of the four Russian diplomats in May 1996 was a
tit-for-tat action after four British diplomats had to leave Moscow for
alleged spy-related activities.
US State Department number three Nicholas Burns said the issue was
primarily a bilateral matter between Britain and Russia, but added on
BBC radio: "Russia has a lot of questions to answer."
Jonathan Eyal of the Royal United Services Institute military and
foreign affairs think-tank in London said the row had to be seen in the
context of the the broader standoff between President Vladimir Putin and
the West.
"There is a sense of deja vu of the Cold War about it," he said.
And he warned: "If Russians retaliate in a bigger fashion, the British
response will be even bigger.
"We are now talking about a very direct retaliation in diplomatic terms
from one of the key countries in the West and this is a key departure."