Russian accuses MI6 of trying to recruit him

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia said on Tuesday it would investigate accusations by a Russian national that British intelligence had tried to recruit him, an announcement likely to further tax fraught relations between London and Moscow.

Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) said the man charged that the MI6 and self-exiled Russian tycoon Boris Berezovsky had approached him to spy for Britain.

The fresh, and public, spying allegation came after KGB agent turned businessman Andrei Lugovoy claimed he had been approached by MI6 to gather incriminating evidence on President Vladimir Putin.

"The Russian citizen named representatives of British special services who had met him and said when, and in what European countries, cities and hotels secret meetings had been arranged with him and what tasks he had been assigned," an FSB spokesman said, without revealing the nature of these tasks.

The spying scandal reflects a steady deterioration in ties between London and Moscow. Russia has refused to hand Lugovoy over to Britain where he is suspected of poisoning Alexander Litvinenko, a harsh Putin critic, with polonium last year.

London had earlier repeatedly snubbed Moscow's requests to extradite Berezovsky and rebel Chechen emissary Akhmed Zakayev.

A British embassy spokesman in Moscow declined to respond to the FSB statement: "It's the British government's long standing policy not to comment on intelligence or espionage allegations."

Lugovoy had earlier accused both Litvinenko and Berezovsky of spying for Britain. Both men have accused Putin of ordering Litvinenko's murder, a charge the Kremlin rejects as ridiculous.