KIEV, Dec 17 (AFP) - Ukraine's opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko said Friday that he was not accusing the SBU secret services of trying to poison him despite suspicions that he ingested a massive dose of dioxin during a dinner with two of its agents.
Yushchenko had told reporters earlier in the week that he suspected that he swallowed the poison during a dinner he had with SBU chief Ihor Smeshko and his deputy during the previous evening.
"The SBU chief and his deputy were present during the last business dinner (on September 5), but ...I don't say that I am directly blaming, or directly suspect these people of my poisoning," Yushchenko told reporters in the eastern city of Kharkiv.
Yushchenko fell ill on September 6, while holding a comfortable lead over his chief presidential rival Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich in opinion polls just weeks before a first round presidential election.
Doctors at a Vienna clinic recently confirmed that his illness, which knocked him off the stump for weeks and horribly distorted his face, was the result of massive doses of dioxin.
"There is an investigation, there is a prosecutor and there will be a court case. I would expect that the court and the rule of the law speak in this matter," Interfax quoted Yushchenko as saying.
"I can only insist, as I did earlier in the Upper Rada (the Ukrainian parliament), that this was without a doubt a political murder attempt," he said.
"It benefited my opponents," he said. "I am not naming any names but I insist that I was poisoned by authorities."
The day before he fell ill, Yushchenko said he did not eat all day until around 10:00 pm (2000 GMT), when he had dinner with friends.
"We all ate from the same plate and everyone was well and healthy," he said.
About an hour and a half later, he had a business dinner with the SBU chief and one of his deputies, which lasted until around 3:30 am.
"When I came home, I kissed my wife on the lips and she asked me: 'Vitya, did you take some kind of medicine?'" because of a "metallic" smell in his mouth, he said.
"I said no," he said. "By that time, I had an excruciating headache" and internal pain.
"The poison given me was hundreds of thousands of times stronger than cyanide," he said. "It's easy to say when and under what circumstances it happened, and then it won't be hard to determine who was the carrier."

12/17/2004 17:53 GMT - AFP