A member of the MI6 proposed in 1993 that “a Serbian Radical nationalist” be killed, reports say.

However, the idea was immediately rejected, according to statements made yesterday at a court interrogation related to the death of Princess Diana.

The MI6 official, identified as “A” said that the idea was “based on humanitarian concerns, in order to prevent more bloodshed in the Balkans".

He did not identify the target, but denied the claims of another service agency that the target was the late Serbian president Slobodan Milošević.

The agent said that it would be “absurd,” because Milošević was, at the time, a "key figure in the diplomatic efforts to end the Balkan wars".

The investigation of the death of Princess Diana and her lover Dodi al-Fayed in a traffic accident in 1997 looked into the claims of Dodi’s father Mohamed, who said that the British secret service killed the two.

The plan for killing a leader in the Balkans is relevant in the investigation because it poses the question of whether the MI6 would ever commit murder, which its chief Richard Dearlove emphatically denied.

The MI6 official, who said that he was trained in the service in case of a Cold War, said " I was surprised with the fact that we are involved in a situation where we are dealing with a bloody civil war in the middle of Europe, where tens of thousands of innocent people were killed.”

At that time there were worries that Milošević could be taken down and that a nationalist extremist would take his place, which would lead to further ethnic cleaning and more deaths, A said.

According to a draft of the plan, dissidents from Yugoslavia or British “military options” would be used, A said, though he did not want to get into further details.

He said that he had proposed the idea to one of the MI6 chiefs, who told him to “put it on paper.”

When the proposal was typed out, one of the chiefs told him that the document had caused a stir and “ordered the document to be destroyed.”

Investigators in Great Britain and France determined that Dodi and Diana died in a traffic accident while trying to flee from photographers and that their driver was intoxicated.

Mohamed al-Fayed accused that they were killed on the orders of Prince Phillip, Queen Elizabeth’s husband, because the royal family could not accept the possibility of Diana marrying an Egyptian Muslim.