Milosevic To Be Buried In Serbia

Slobodan Milosevic's remains arrived back to Belgrade for a funeral Saturday in Serbia, ending days of speculation over where the ex-Yugoslav leader would be buried.

A top official of Milosevic's Socialist Party said there would be a public viewing of the body in Belgrade before the burial in his hometown.

Zoran Andjelkovic, a deputy leader of the party, told The Associated Press that Milosevic's remains will be laid to rest in the backyard of his family home in the gritty industrial town of Pozarevac, about 30 miles southeast of Belgrade.

Andjelkovic also confirmed that the body would be put on public view in the Serbian capital before the burial, displayed in a tent in front of the federal parliament building in the center of the capital.

"Let them dare remove the tent," Andjelkovic said.

Milosevic may not be buried in a state funeral with full honors but will be given a respectable burial, Milosevic legal adviser Branco Rakic said.

The Socialists decided to put the body on display out in the street after they had been denied a permission by the authorities to display the body inside the parliament building or at another unspecified location.

Milorad Vucelic, vice president of Milosevic's Socialist Party, told The Associated Press in Belgrade on Wednesday that he and other party officials would receive the former president's remains at the Belgrade airport.

Milosevic, 64, died Saturday in his cell near The Hague, where he had stood trial for more than four years on war crimes charges. Preliminary tests indicated he died of a heart attack. A toxicology report was expected Wednesday to determine if he was on unprescribed medication that could have damaged his health.

The Socialists, who were ousted from power along with Milosevic in 2000, are hoping to make political gains from their leader's death at the detention unit of the U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands, where he was being tried on charges of war crimes and genocide.

On Wednesday, an allied ultranationalist party, the Serbian Radical Party, urged retired police and army officers to appear at the Milosevic funeral in ceremonial uniforms in a show of respect.

On Tuesday, Socialist Party officials had suggested the funeral would be held in Moscow — home to his widow, Mirjana Markovic, and son, Marko, who fled Serbia to Russia in 2003 in self-imposed exile. His daughter, Marija, lives in Montenegro.

Vucelic could not say if the wife and son would attend, but Sergei Baburin, a Russian nationalist lawmaker, said in Moscow that Mirjana Markovic — who faces charges of abuse of power during her husband's rule — would not travel to Serbia for the funeral because Serbian security guarantees were "insufficient." There was no immediate comment from Markovic.

A Belgrade court on Tuesday suspended a warrant for her arrest — but ordered her passport seized upon her arrival, which would prevent her from leaving immediately after the burial.

Tomanovic said Marko Milosevic informed the U.N. war crimes tribunal of the decision late Tuesday to send his father's body to Belgrade.

On Wednesday, the president of the Serb-run half of Bosnia-Herzegovina, Dragan Cavic, said he would not attend the funeral. Cavic said he never forgave Milosevic for an embargo he imposed on Serb-controlled Bosnia before the end of the country's 1992-95 war.

On Wednesday, the U.N. war crimes tribunal said it would consider declassifying documents in Milosevic's case — including information about Milosevic's health and medication use. Tribunal President Fausto Pocar assigned a trial chamber to consider the issue, but no date was set for hearings.

Tribunal officials told The Associated Press on Tuesday that Milosevic intentionally took drugs that undermined his medication in order to slow the pace of his war crimes trial.

Milosevic, who was defending himself against 66 counts of war crimes, was allowed to work in a private office, making it impossible to monitor material they may have smuggled in to him, one of the officials told the AP.

A Dutch toxicologist, Donald Uges, has said blood tests earlier this year uncovered traces of a drug used to treat leprosy or tuberculosis that would neutralize the effects of the beta-blockers Milosevic was taking for high blood pressure.