THE exiled head of the Yugoslav Royal Family vowed yesterday never to return to his country while "that bastard" Slobodan Milosevic remained in power. 

Speaking amid hundreds of applauding Serbs as they marked Orthodox Easter Day in London yesterday, Crown Prince Alexander Karadjordjevic called on Nato to halt its bombing campaign in Serbia, saying that the air raids were merely cementing President Milosevic's hold on power. 

The Prince, born at Claridge's in a room declared Yugoslav for a day, is the eldest son of King Peter II, who fled from the Nazis in 1941 and has spent his life in exile. 

He and his wife, Crown Princess Katherine, were welcomed as they entered the Serbian Community Centre in Ladbroke Grove, beside St Sava's Serbian Orthodox Church. The Prince said: "I am against the bombing because it is hurting my people and only consolidating a regime which I am against, which practises ethnic cleansing. To be a big nation, we must respect all nations. Easter is very special and to be true Christians you must recognise everyone." 

Prince Alexander has written to Tony Blair, President Clinton and President Chirac of France calling for an end to Nato's airstrikes. He said that the action had "turned into a real nightmare the lives of ordinary Yugoslav citizens, the people who are not guilty of anything. Civilian casualties are mounting and the scars will take generations to heal." 

He repeated in his letter a common accusation among Serbs that Nato has double standards: "You will recall that when, in 1995, the Serbs were ethnically cleansed from Croatia and western Bosnia, no one came to their rescue." Earlier, at least 1,000 people at St Sava's heard a message from the Serbian Orthodox Patriarch, Pavle. He called for peaceful co-existence in Kosovo and condemned the Nato bombing.