Bosnia's Serb Republic came under heavy pressure yesterday to surrender the indicted war criminals Mr Radovan Karadzic and Gen Ratko Mladic after Mr Slobodan Milosevic's appearance at The Hague tribunal.
UN prosecutors in the Dutch capital told its Prime Minister, Mr Mladen Ivanic, that the time had come to start co-operating with the tribunal.
Officials said the republic, created under the 1995 Dayton accords signed by Mr Milosevic when he was still in power, was the last Balkan "safe haven" for fugitive war criminals.
Mr Karadzic, the notorious wartime political leader of the Republika Srpsksa, and Gen Mladic, his military chief, are still at large and their movements are being monitored by NATO-led S-For units and western intelligence agencies.
Mr Ivanic said yesterday that his republic's adoption - he expected it in the next three weeks - of a law on co-operation with The Hague would clear the way for the arrest of Mr Karadzic and Gen Mladic.
Mr Milosevic's wife, Ms Mira Markovic, feels lost without her husband. "I cannot do anything on my own without him," she said in remarks reported by the Croatian weekly Globus.
"He has always been around in my life and now I have to look after everything. "I still find him very cute and likeable. What can I say? He is my hero," she said.