SERBIA: As divisive in death as in life, Slobodan Milosevic's burial was lauded by his son yesterday as a "true people's funeral", while his daughter vowed to sever all ties with her family for turning the event into a "scandalous" political rally.
After about 50,000, mostly elderly, mourners paid their last respects to Mr Milosevic in central Belgrade on Saturday, he was taken 50 miles to his family home in the bleak industrial town of Pozarevac, where around 20,000 people saw him buried under a lime tree where he is said to have first kissed his future wife, Mira Markovic.
Rather than return to Serbia and face corruption charges, however, Ms Markovic stayed in Moscow with her son, Marko, who fled to Russia in fear of his life when his father was ousted in October 2000.
"We are deeply touched and thankful to all those who came to pay their respects," Marko said yesterday, denying local press reports that he had called the ceremony "terrible".
"It was a true people's funeral, the funeral of a national leader," he insisted.
Marija Milosevic - who is wanted by Belgrade police for firing a gun when her father was arrested in April 2001 - also stayed away from a funeral that she said bitterly divided the family.
"I wanted a church service and it was planned," she said in Montenegro, where she wanted to bury Mr Milosevic in the family's ancestral village.
"But my mother and brother were against a service. Nowhere on our planet are people being buried in their backyards," she complained. "There is no reason any more for me to have any contact with my family."
In central Belgrade, thousands of people waved pictures of Mr Milosevic and fugitive war crimes suspects Ratko Mladic and Radovan Karadzic, as the former leader's coffin was raised onto a dais outside the Yugoslav parliament building that his opponents stormed in 2000.
Chanting "Slobo, Slobo!" and "Serbia", many mourners also waved placards accusing the UN court at The Hague of killing Mr Milosevic, who was 64-years-old and faced 66 counts of war crimes when he died of a heart attack on March 11th.
"You can kill a man by hanging, by shooting, or slowly by denying him proper medical care," said Col-Gen Leonid Ivashov, a former Russian chief of staff, who gave evidence at The Hague and attended the funeral.
"They couldn't show the guilt of Milosevic or let him go," he told The Irish Times. "For me, this was a political execution." Former US attorney general Ramsey Clark, a long-time supporter of Mr Milosevic, also condemned the West for persecuting Serbia and its former leader.
"Slobodan Milosevic resisted, he rejected submission, sought peace and used all his energy and skills to preserve Yugoslavia," said Mr Clark.
"Necessary (medical) treatment was denied to him. Finally his great heart stopped and beats no more," Mr Clark said, telling the cheering crowd: "History will prove that Slobodan Milosevic was right!"
After speakers repeatedly denounced Serbia's pro-western government, a brass band struck up a mournful march and Mr Milosevic's flag-draped coffin was placed into the back of a Mercedes van, which led a cortege down the motorway to Pozarevac. There, as candles glowed in the gathering dusk, the coffin was lowered into a double grave - with space left for his wife, according to Serb Orthodox tradition.
At around the same time in central Belgrade, about 2,000 people were marching to celebrate the end of a dark chapter in Serb history and hope for brighter days to come. "We have got rid of him at last, and things can only get better," said university student Dragan Rakic.
Yesterday evening, Marko Milosevic insisted to Belgrade's BK television that he was satisfied with his father's burial, despite it failing to attract the 500,000 people that his allies had predicted.
But in Montenegro, the only former Yugoslav republic still bound to Serbia after the wars led by Mr Milosevic in the 1990s, Marko's sister seemed inconsolable.
Calling Serbia a "treacherous country which sold him out," Marija lambasted the dozens of Serb party officials who gathered, teary-eyed, at his funeral, for trying to make political capital out of his death.
"My stomach turned upside down as I watched his enemies stand by his coffin, the very people who ran away from him like mice on the day he was arrested," she said. "I did not ask them to come, they are not our family," she added.
Marija also vowed to have Mr Milosevic's body exhumed and reburied in Montenegro.