PRESIDENT Nelson Mandela announced on Monday he had been asked by Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic to intervene in the crisis in Yugoslavia, but that he had declined. “I am not keen to intervene in another issue,” Mandela told reporters in Pretoria. “It engages your full time and attention, and the problems in South Africa are such that we cannot afford that.”
Mandela became involved in the Lockerbie stalemate, and is credited with persuading Libyan leader Moammar Gadaffi to hand over on Monday two suspects in the 1988 bombing for trial in the Netherlands.