Campbell ‘flirted with Taylor’ says former agent

Supermodel Naomi Campbell's account of how two men came to her room after a fund-raising dinner hosted by Nelson Mandela in 1997 and handed her a pouch containing some "dirty looking stones" has been disputed by her former agent Carole White and the actress Mia Farrow.

White and Farrow appeared as witnesses today at the war crimes trial in The Hague of Charles Taylor, the former President of Liberia. Prosecutors are seeking to establish that the former dictator took blood diamonds illegally mined in Sierra Leone to buy arms for the rebels in that country's long civil war.

Naomi Campbell, who met Taylor at the dinner hosted by Mandela, told the trial last Thursday that, after she went to bed that night, the two men knocked on her door and gave her the pouch. She went back to bed without even looking inside, and in the morning found it contained a few dirty looking diamonds.

At breakfast Campbell told White and Farrow what had happened. She told the court: "One of the two said 'That's obviously Charles Taylor', and I said 'I guess that was'."

Today, both White and Farrow gave a very different version of the episode. White told the court that Campbell had "mildly flirted" with Taylor during dinner. "Naomi was very excited, and told me, 'He's going to give me some diamonds'."

After dinner, Campbell became "very excited" about the diamonds, according to White. She and Campbell went into the garden twice to see if the men with the diamonds had arrived. When they finally came to Campbell's room, White recalls, "I gave them a Coca-Cola each. They took out a scruffy piece of paper [containing the diamonds]. They were quite disappointing because they weren't shiny." White told the court there were five or six diamonds.

White said she became worried about the gift because she knew it was illegal to take diamonds out of South Africa and she knew it would be she who would have to carry them if Campbell decided to hold on to them. She suggested Campbell donate the diamonds to Mandela's charity. Mandela's aide Jeremy Ractliffe later reluctantly accepted them.

Earlier, Farrow told the court what happened at breakfast the morning after the Mandela dinner.

"Before [Campbell] even sat down she recounted an event of that evening and she said that in the night she had been awakened by some men who were knocking at the door and they had been sent by Charles Taylor and they had given her a huge diamond, and she said she intended to give the diamond to Nelson Mandela's charity."

Asked by the prosecution who it was who had said the diamonds came from Taylor, Farrow reiterated: "Naomi Campbell said they came from Charles Taylor."

Asked by the defence lawyer how many diamonds there were, Farrow repeated: "[Campbell] said a 'large diamond' singular, that's what she said." ·