Serb reaction: Few Serbs shed tears for Slobodan Milosevic yesterday, but allies and enemies agreed that his legacy would loom over the Balkans for many years to come. A hundred or so supporters filed slowly into Mr Milosevic's old Socialist party office in central Belgrade, where they signed a book of condolence and many kissed a large portrait of the former president.
Several complained that flags were not flying at half-mast in the capital and brandished newspapers with lurid headlines claiming Milosevic (64) had been poisoned in his cell at the UN war crimes tribunal at The Hague.
"They couldn't convict him with their lies so they finished him off in jail," said pensioner Milodrag Radic, jabbing a finger at a rain-soaked front page that carried a picture of the alleged war criminal and the claim: "The Hague killed Milosevic".
"Milosevic did not get adequate health care," said another pensioner, Milislav Jakovljevic. "I have not voted for a while but at the next election I will vote for the Socialists."
Bora Jovanovic (54) agreed that Milosevic's death - and the conspiracy theories already surrounding it - would help radical parties attack a beleaguered government.
"I was surprised he died. I thought he would fight to the end," said the engineer. "I suspect they killed him with medication."
While world leaders predicted history would condemn Milosevic, the mostly elderly gathering of his supporters in Belgrade insisted time would exonerate their hero.
"In a few years everyone in Serbia will see that Mr Milosevic had our best interests at heart," said Liljana, a retired teacher who declined to give her surname.
But as threatened protests by Milosevic supporters fizzled out across rain-lashed Serbia, most of the candles and flowers to be seen in Belgrade were carried by young people mourning the very man who sent the "Butcher of the Balkans" to The Hague.
Several hundred of them marched to the grave of Zoran Djindjic, the reformist prime minister shot dead on March 12th, 2003, by nationalist supporters of Milosevic.
Current premier Vojislav Kostunica laid a wreath at the spot where a sniper cut down the charismatic leader outside the government building, three years after he had led the movement that toppled Milosevic and set Serbia on a path of integration with Europe.
"He was everything that Milosevic was not," said student Lubomir Pajovic (22). "He was our example for building the future. I don't care about Milosevic - he is our past. Now we need another Djindjic."
Amid fears of clashes between followers of the late president and his assassinated foe, Mr Kostunica appealed for calm on a day when his country marked the deaths of both men, and displayed the rifts gouged in Serb society by more than 15 years of strife.
"People may say they support the radicals and nationalists but I don't think they'd really vote for them," said Dragan, a young businessman. "We've had enough of fighting Europe and the United States. We just want to live better now."
But in the shadow of the crumpled defence ministry bombed by Nato during the Kosovo conflict in 1999, Antonjievic Mladen (21) said Milosevic's death might play into nationalist hands, particularly if he is given a grand funeral in his homeland.
"I always thought I'd be happy to hear him dead, but somehow I wasn't," he said. "If he'd lived he could have revealed so much more about all his crimes."