Britain and the United States have said they take no satisfaction from the murder of the Serbian paramilitary leader Zeljko Raznatovic, better known as Arkan, in a Belgrade hotel.

The US Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, and UK Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook, said they would have preferred him to stand trial in The Hague War Crimes Tribunal.

"I regret his death because it prevents us doing justice to the victims of his atrocities by seeing him in the dock," Mr Cook said.

Arkan, who had been indicted for atrocities committed during the Bosnian war by the UN tribunal, was gunned down at Belgrade's Intercontinental hotel on Saturday evening. His bodyguard and one other person died in the attack.

Reports said a lone masked gunman carried out the killing and escaped. However, some witnesses said there had been a group of attackers.

Motive unknown

Arkan's death is expected to be celebrated in Kosovo where he is alleged to have committed numerous crimes at the time of the Nato bombardment last year.

However leaders there said that they too would have liked him to have faced justice.

The motive for the killing is unknown. Correspondents say it is most likely to be politically or gangland related.

Some people said Arkan had been killed because he knew too much about the war crimes committed by Serbian security forces during the Yugoslav conflict.

"Someone who knew a lot and took part in many things was killed," Goran Svilanovic, of the moderate opposition party Civic Alliance, said.

Mirza Hajric, adviser to Bosnian Muslim leader Alija Izetbegovic, said Arkan "could have provided crucial evidence on [Yugoslav President Slobodan] Milosevic's involvement in war crimes in Bosnia".

Arkan led the notorious Tigers, who were part of the Serb Volunteer Force operating in Bosnia and Croatia and allegedly in Kosovo.

Mr Cook said Arkan and "his followers were in the frontline of ethnic cleansing in Bosnia and Kosovo, enriching themselves whilst they persecuted the defenceless".

Politically motivated murders in Serbia, although not as common as underworld "hits", do occur from time to time.

The BBC's south-east Europe analyst, Gabriel Partos, says that crime, government and business have a symbiotic relationship in President Milosevic's Serbia, and it may in the end be difficult to decide whether Arkan's death was a political or a gangland killing.

Violent place

In recent years, an assistant interior minister, left-wing politician and anti-government journalist have been gunned down, while prominent opposition leader, Vuk Draskovic, said a car crash he survived late last year had been hatched by the authorities.

Arkan was an extreme nationalist who had long been closely associated with the Belgrade regime, but he may have recently fallen out of favour with the Serbian leadership.

He also had many gangland enemies. He was a powerful figure in the Serbian underworld and was believed to have amassed wealth from war profiteering.

He was wanted for bank robberies in western Europe in the 1970s and 1980s.

Vladan Batic, of the Civic Alliance, said: "Someone is pulling the strings and decided who's going to be next."

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