British Find Radiation at 12 Locations

LONDON, Nov. 30 -- The trail of radiation found in London expanded to 12 sites Thursday, and British authorities turned their attention to two Russian aircraft in their efforts to track the poison that killed a former Russian intelligence officer, a British government minister told Parliament on Thursday.

The four newly disclosed sites include two hospitals where former spy Alexander Litvinenko was treated, the Sheraton Park Lane Hotel in central London and a car found in north London, according to Scotland Yard. Police released no further details about the car; Litvinenko lived in north London, and radiation was also discovered in his home.

On Thursday, a plane belonging to the Russian airline Transaero was checked for radiation and cleared after it landed at London's Heathrow Airport. British Home Secretary John Reid told Parliament that "there is one other Russian plane that we know of that we think we may be interested in."

Reid said that about 24 venues had been examined and that it was probable that additional sites would be tested for radiation as police "continue to trace possible witnesses and examine Mr. Litvinenko's movements."

The former officer in the Federal Security Service, or FSB, the domestic successor to the KGB, died Nov. 23 of exposure to the radioactive substance polonium-210. He was a fierce critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin and in a deathbed statement accused the Kremlin of ordering his assassination. Russian authorities have labeled that charge as absurd.

Former Russian prime minister Yegor Gaidar, who suddenly fell ill in Dublin last Friday, continued to recuperate in a Moscow clinic Thursday, according to his spokesman and an Irish diplomat. His daughter repeated earlier statements that her father could have been poisoned. But doctors have not confirmed that, and Irish authorities, who are conducting an inquiry into the illness, said they had no evidence of it.

Gaidar discharged himself from a Dublin hospital and then spent Saturday at the Russian Embassy in Dublin before returning to Moscow.

British police have released little information about the locations where the radiation has been detected in London. But the expansion of the probe to the examination of aircraft that flew between London and Moscow, among other destinations, and a hotel that Litvinenko apparently did not visit take the inquiry beyond the movements of the former spy.

Litvinenko became sick Nov. 1 after several meetings in London's upscale Mayfair neighborhood. Contamination had already been discovered in a Japanese restaurant where he met an Italian academic, a hotel bar where he met three Russian men, and three office buildings.

Among the office buildings was one at 7 Down St. used by Boris Berezovsky, the exiled Russian tycoon who fell out with Putin in 2000 and has waged a long-distance campaign against him since then. Litvinenko was close to Berezovsky, who is wanted in Russia on numerous charges, among them calling for the violent overthrow of the government. He denies the allegations.

Another building, at 25 Grosvenor St., is the office of an international security company. Litvinenko visited both sites Nov. 1.

Police have not disclosed what connection, if any, Litvinenko had with a building at 58 Grosvenor St., where radiation was also detected. Traces of radiation from polonium-210 were found in a ground-floor office there, according to a two-page flier the British Health Protection Agency gave to employees.