MARGARET Thatcher refused to sign "begging letters" looking for sponsorship for the embattled 1986 Commonwealth Games in Edinburgh.

The Iron Lady considered it "slightly demeaning" for the Prime Minister to get involved in the funding of the high-profile event, according to previously secret files.

At one point she wrote "I'm not going to sign letters asking for more money", while aides accused the then Scottish Office of expecting the Conservative leader to send "begging" appeals. .

Mrs Thatcher did, however, hold meetings in No 10 and Edinburgh with a Japanese businessman and alleged war criminal brought in by the Games's self-style saviour, controversial former Daily Mirror and Daily Record owner Robert Maxwell.

The documents, released under the '30-year rule', reveal for the first time the extent of the internal government wrangling over the Games.

The event struggled as country after country pulled out in protest at apartheid in South Africa, amid accusations that Mrs Thatcher's government was not vocal enough in its condemnation of the ruling regime.

Commonwealth nations protested loudly after the UK selected the South African-born runner Zola Budd, and in the end a majority of countries said they would not take part.

The boycott posed a massive problem for the Games organisers, the files show.

At one point just £4 million of an expected £12m in sponsorship had been raised.

When Edinburgh bid for the Games the Conservative Government insisted that it would receive no help from taxpayers.

But the documents show that on September 12, 1986, Malcolm Rifkind, the then Scottish Secretary, urged a change of heart, warning that as a result of the boycott the Games faced a 'doomsday' scenario.

In response the cabinet stood firm with Mrs Thatcher, saying that no public money would be forthcoming.

But ministers also come under increasing pressure from media mogul Mr Maxwell.

Within five years he would be dead, after falling off his private yacht, and it would emerge that he had fraudulently misappropriated his newspapers' staff pension fund.

But in 1986 he offered to help the Games solve its sponsorship woes.

He introduced Mrs Thatcher to Ryoichi Sasakawa, a Japanese businessman who made his money in the motor boat racing industry and died in 1995.

He was described by No 10 in a memo to the Prime Minister as a right-wing millionaire businessman who "remains a shadowy figure" and has used his money to "buy respectability and political influence" amid suggestions he could be a "Class A" war criminal.

After Mr Maxwell called on Mrs Thatcher and other ministers to stump up £1m of the £4m Games deficit, the Tory leader sent an icy reply saying that she saw the tabloid owner would be meeting Mr Sasakawa soon and to please "recall" to him their meetings both in Edinburgh and at No 10.

She also overruled a suggestion from Mr Rifkind that he could find that the £1m from within his budget.

Her office wrote that she "decided...would not be right... for the government to go back on its clearly expressed declarations that no taxpayers money would be found for the Games".

Intriguingly, the Prime Minister later held a secret meeting with Mr Maxwell on October 22.

A note in the archived file records: "Robert Maxwell is coming to see the Prime Minister at 11.15 ... together with the Secretary of State for Scotland. This meeting will not appear in the diary".

But still Mrs Thatcher held firm, even when Mr Maxwell suggested that Mr Sasakawa would put in his promised £2m only if the government gave £1m.

Eventually the money was found without a contribution from the government, and Mr Maxwell praised the Prime Minister for her fortitude in the face of his pleading.

"Though I did not like it at the time ... I must tell you I admired the way you stuck to your guns," he wrote to her.