Documents given to Mr Litvinenko by the Italian academic Mario Scaramella on the probable day of his poisoning named Igor Vlasov, 46, as an assassin who had come to London to kill people identified as "enemies of the Russian people", a Russian government media agent said.
Mr Vlasov's whereabouts are unknown and there is some question whether such a person exists. Mr Vlasov, according to the reports, is a Russian special services officer.
In an interview with CNN, Professor Scaramella said he had tried to warn Mr Litvinenko they were being targeted.
Meanwhile, a Russian secret service agent, Andrei Lugovoy, who met Mr Litvinenko in London on November 1, the day he is believed to have been radioactively poisoned, had previously said he would be willing to speak to the nine British police officers now pursuing inquiries in Moscow.
But an unidentified man who answered Mr Lugovoy's mobile phone on Tuesday said Mr Lugovoy was in hospital and it was unclear "whether and when he will be able to talk" or how long he would be in hospital," Los Angeles Times reported from Moscow.
Meanwhile, Mario Scaramella had been receiving treatment at University College Hospital in London after testing positive for the same deadly radioactive toxin that is thought to have killed Mr Litvinenko.
A hospital spokesman said today, December 6, 2006, that Mr Scaramella had been discharged and that he was showing no symptoms of radiation poisoning.
In an interview with CNN from his hospital bed earlier today, Mr Scaramella said he only had about a twentieth of the dose found in Mr Litvinenko`s system.
KC
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