Media wars over Litvinenko as probe drags

By Mark Trevelyan

LONDON (Reuters) - A friend of poisoned former Russian agent Alexander Litvinenko accused Moscow on Thursday of exploiting the dead man's ex-wife in a KGB-style campaign to blacken his name.

Alexander Goldfarb was responding to an interview in which Litvinenko's first wife, Natalia, described how he left her and their two young children, taking all the family's savings and even raiding her purse "down to the last kopeck".

The damaging account "clearly resembles a classic disinformation campaign of the old KGB", Goldfarb said in a telephone interview.

"They explore her grudges against him, against his second wife...They're manipulating her in a very sophisticated way."

His comments were the latest shot in a media battle being waged between supporters and detractors of Litvinenko, the former KGB agent who died in London four months ago after being poisoned by radioactive polonium.

Both sides appear to have stepped up their campaigns in the past two weeks, filling a vacuum created by the absence of new information on the case from British investigators.

The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), considering whether to bring charges on the basis of a police report it received on January 31, said it asked Scotland Yard several weeks ago to provide some "further information".

A Scotland Yard spokeswoman said police were liaising with both the CPS and Russian authorities.