Serbia edged towards compromise with Slobodan Milosevic's family yesterday over its request to bury him there, after the former president's allies threatened to topple the government unless he was laid to rest in his homeland.
The Socialist Party cranked up the pressure on prime minister Vojislav Kostunica, while Mr Milosevic's relatives bade emotional farewells to him through a Serb press buzzing with allegations that he was poisoned at the UN war crimes court in The Hague.
But after president Boris Tadic, the mayor of Belgrade and the military top brass refused to allow Mr Milosevic the honour of a state burial and a place in the prestigious "Avenue of Heroes" cemetery, his nationalist supporters said they would settle for less.
"I told the ruling majority they cannot expect the Socialists to enter parliament if Slobodan Milosevic is not buried in a dignified way in Belgrade," said Zoran Andjelkovic, a senior Socialist party official.
"By dignified, we mean that members of his family can come to the funeral and get the right to stay in Serbia and to find an adequate place at the cemetery, a place worthy of a historic person."
The main obstacle to a funeral in Serbia is the arrest warrant pending for Mr Milosevic's widow, Mira Markovic, who fled to Moscow to escape allegations of abuse of power. Mr Milosevic's legal adviser asked a Belgrade court to suspend the warrant and - despite Mr Tadic apparently rejecting such a move - Serbia's public prosecutor proposed lifting the warrant last night.
Serb newspaper Blic reported that the government had already struck a deal with Ms Markovic, by which she would return for the funeral but surrender her passport and agree to stand trial.
But the sight of Mr Milosevic's widow in the dock would inflame nationalist feeling in Serbia, where Mr Kostunica's minority government relies for a majority on the support of at least 19 of the 22 Socialist deputies in the 250-seat parliament.
The mere return of a woman called the "Red Witch" for her communist leanings and "Lady Macbeth" for her powers of manipulation could be explosive for the government, amid talks on Kosovo's future and before an independence referendum in Montenegro.
Yesterday, Ms Markovic shared with Vecernje Novosti newspaper the last words she heard from her childhood sweetheart the night before he died: "Sleep well, my darling. When I wake up in the morning I will call you." "My husband has been killed by the Hague tribunal," she said.
"They did it because they were in trouble. Only 37 hours remained [for the trial to close] and they did not have anything to convict him." Their daughter, Marija, offered a full-page farewell to her father in a newspaper in Montenegro, where she wants him to be buried in the Milosevic family's native village.
"Dad, I love you," ran the caption beneath a photograph of a youthful Slobodan.
In Belgrade, the suggestion of finding a place in the Avenue of Heroes for a man who died facing 66 counts of war crimes seemed to appal more Serbs than it satisfied.
Belgrade mayor Nenad Bogdanovic dismissed the Socialists' request for a place of honour for Milosevic.
But amid fears of nationalist unrest if Milosevic is buried in Serbia - and his widow risks arrest by returning home to attend - Socialist party secretary Zoran Andjelkovic rejected the mayor's ruling.
"We don't care what Bogdanovic says, the citizens will decide," he said. "They're the ones who decide where the Avenue of Heroes is."