Paris - France acknowledged yesterday that a man arrested in Serbia on charges of spying for Paris and planning to assassinate President Slobodan Milosevic was a naturalised French citizen of Yugoslav origin. Mr Jugoslav Petrusic was one of five men arrested in Serbia last month as alleged members of a group called "Spider" which Belgrade said had plotted four different scenarios for killing the Serbian leader. "He acquired French nationality by marriage in 1990," a Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Ms Anne Gazeau-Secret, told journalists.
France has dismissed as absurd Belgrade's charge that it was behind the alleged plot, which officials in Paris said appeared linked to Serbian efforts to undermine the authority of France's Mr Bernard Kouchner, the UN administrator in Kosovo.
