MOSCOW. Sept 3 (Interfax) - The Russian Foreign Ministry has confirmed the Investigative Committee's notification of the British side about its refusal to partake in the new stage of the ongoing inquiry into the death of Alexander Litvinenko and regretted that the British authorities have demonstrated their inability to hold a genuinely transparent and unbiased inquiry into that case.
"We have to state that the new "public investigation" of London will not be "public" at all. No matter what information the British authorities may possess, it is already obvious that the British government will not make it a subject of an open and competitive process involving Russian detectives. It is hard to imagine how such an inquiry can be objective," Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich said.
"We are more than sorry that after traveling a long way the British authorities have appeared to be unable or at least have no desire to hold a genuinely open, transparent and unbiased inquiry into this case," Lukashevich said in a commentary posted on the Russian Foreign Ministry's website.
He noted that the Russian Investigative Committee "had been a full-fledged participant in that process [since December 2012] and voluntarily assisted the British coroner appointed to investigate that case." The Russian Investigative Committee shared its own investigative materials with the British police and security services and "expected to participate in the London investigation until the end," the ministry spokesman emphasized.
Nevertheless, the British government announced on July 31, 2014, it had an intention to begin "a public inquiry" into that death, he said.
"In fact, this means that relevant materials the British authorities describe as "classified" will be considered at closed-door hearings in London. They will not be accessible either to the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation or to the public," the Russian Foreign Ministry argued.