Poison claim based on tribunal medical report

The letter: The blame game over Slobodan Milosevic's sudden death began in earnest on the steps of the war crimes tribunal in the Hague.

A day after his death, the former Serbian president remained the lead actor in events yesterday when Zdenko Tomanovic, his legal assistant, waved a five-page handwritten letter apparently written by Milosevic in which he claimed in sprawling Cyrillic: "They would like to poison me.

"I'm writing to you looking for help against criminal activities perpetrated in the institution operating under the sign of the United Nations," read Mr Tomanovic from the letter which he said Milosevic had sent last Friday to the Russian embassy in the Hague.

In a cover letter, Milosevic asked in English that the letter be given to authorities in Moscow.

Mr Tomanovic said Milosevic wrote that he had received a copy of his tribunal medical report from January 12th noting large quantities of an antibiotic in his blood that is normally used for treating tuberculosis and leprosy. Apart from a flu, Mr Milosevic said he had never had any comparable disease in the last five years and had never knowingly taken any such drugs.

He has suffered from heart trouble and high blood pressure and was taking medication for these conditions. Mr Tomanovic was unable to name the drug Mr Milosevic said had been found in his blood.

"In any case, the person giving me drugs for leprosy or tuberculosis surely cannot be treating me," he wrote. "Surely the people against whom I defended my country in the war also have an interest in silencing me and cannot be interested in treating me." According to Mr Tomanovic, Milosevic said in the letter that he had been refused permission to travel to Moscow for medical treatment out of fear that this drug would show up in independent tests.

However chief prosecutor Carla del Ponte scoffed at the poison charges, saying: "Until we have precise [ autopsy] results, it's rumours."

A small group of Serbian emigrants living in the Hague laid bunches of lilies and lit candles at the gate of the tribunal on a bright, chilly day yesterday. "He was my president. I'm laying flowers for my president," said an elderly woman who declined to be named, as she stroked a small picture of Milosevic.

Sandra Bannsevska, a 28-year-old Dutch woman with Serbian emigrant parents, said she had attended the trial. "It was so sad to see him behind glass. It's ridiculous to put just one leader on trial," she said.