Four Russian diplomats expelled from Britain in a stand-off over Moscow`s refusal to extradite the murder suspect in the Litvinenko affair have left the country, the Russian embassy said Friday.
A spokesman for the embassy confirmed to AFP that the four had left their posts in London, but was unable immediately to specify when.
Prosecutors here want to charge Russian businessman and former Soviet KGB agent Andrei Lugovoi with the radiation poisoning murder of outspoken Kremlin critic Alexander Litvinenko.
The former Russian agent turned dissident, a British citizen, met Lugovoi for tea in a central London hotel on November 1 last year. He died in agony in hospital on November 23.
London announced on July 16 that it would expel four Russian diplomats in retaliation for Moscow`s refusal to extradite Lugovoi.
Moscow insists it is against the Russian constitution to extradite its nationals and has hit back by announcing that four British diplomats will be expelled from Moscow in a tit-for-tat move.
On Thursday, the Russian embassy said Britain had given its diplomats 10 working days to leave the country.
A Foreign Office spokesman said the ministry would not comment on whether they had gone.
"We have a practice of not commenting on diplomatic expulsions because while they`re already a difficult process, we don`t want to further complicate that," he told AFP.
Litvinenko`s killing and the fall-out from it has triggered a chill in Anglo-Russian relations, plunging them to their lowest level since the Cold War, AFP reported.(*)
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