SERBIA: Hundreds of Serbs paid their respects to Slobodan Milosevic yesterday, as his coffin went on view next door to the presidential villa in Belgrade where he was arrested almost five years ago.
A throng of mostly elderly Serbs, clutching flowers and candles, waited for their former leader outside Belgrade's Revolution Museum, after he was flown back from Holland to be buried in his family home town of Pozarevac tomorrow.
Many peered through the pine trees around the museum to glimpse the villa where Milosevic was seized in April 2001, before being sent two months later to the UN war crimes court at The Hague, where he died last Saturday. Several wore badges depicting Milosevic and Tito, the communist dictator whose death in 1980 unleashed nationalism across the federation, and who is buried just a few hundred yards away through the woods.
"They were our greatest men and greatest leaders," said pensioner Milorad Lukic, outside the museum once devoted to Tito.
Almost two hours later than expected, a cortege crawled up the winding driveway and a silver Mercedes minivan drew to a halt at the entrance to the museum, where officials from Milosevic's Socialist party lifted out his closed coffin and bore it inside.
Several shaven-headed, black-clad security guards struggled briefly to keep order as dozens of cameramen and photographers craned to get closer to the plain wooden coffin, and a few Milosevic loyalists pushed forward shouting "Slobo!" and "Serbia!" Police intervened to restore calm, and the coffin was carried past one of Tito's old cars and up the stairs of the museum, where it was covered in a Serb flag and red roses, and placed on a table in the centre of a large, bright exhibition room.
"Sloba is not dead, Sloba will never die for the Serb people," said one pensioner, as mourners touched the coffin and knelt to kiss a gold-framed photograph of the former Yugoslav president, who was denied a state funeral by a government that fears his death will rekindle unrest.
Three Yugoslav flags and three Serb flags stood behind the coffin, and three people stood either side in a guard that changed every 10 minutes.
"It is a great honour for me to be part of the guard," said Socialist party official Igor Beciric, as he waited his turn to take up position.
"I am very lucky to get a chance to be with the president one last time." He also brushed off disappointment over the relatively small crowds that met Milosevic at the airport and filed into the museum, after the Socialists had predicted that tens of thousands of people would flock to pay their respects.
But he could not confirm that Milosevic's widow, Mira, and their son, Marko, would return from Moscow for the funeral. If she does come to Belgrade, she faces arrest unless she attends a March 23rd court hearing over alleged abuse of power.