SERBIA: Allies and enemies of Slobodan Milosevic are braced to bid farewell to the former Yugoslav president today, with loyalists preparing to display his coffin in central Belgrade and critics planning a mass rally to condemn his legacy.
Mr Milosevic will be buried in his home town of Pozarevac, outside the Serb capital, where workers completed a headstone and a grave for him under a lime tree in the garden of his family home, where he is said to have first kissed his future wife, Mira Markovic.
A senior official in Serbia's Socialist Party said yesterday that none of Mr Milosevic's Moscow-based family will attend his funeral, according to news agency RIA Novosti. Zoran Andjelkovic, deputy leader of Mr Milosevic's party, was quoted as saying that his wife, his son, Marko Milosevic, and his older brother, Borislav Milosevic, would not be present.
Ms Markovic faces arrest if she fails to answer corruption charges at a Belgrade court hearing on March 23rd. "The government has not provided guarantees that are strong enough for her to come," said Russian Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov, as he was met by Mr Milosevic's socialist allies at Belgrade airport. "It is enough that Marko has lost his father - he should not lose his mother too."
Mr Milosevic's funeral is due to begin at midday, with a public viewing of the coffin in front of the Yugoslav parliament building his opponents stormed in October 2000.
A cortege will then travel the 80km (50 miles) to Pozarevac to bury Mr Milosevic at 3pm, the same time that Belgrade residents have been urged by text message to gather on the city's Republic Square to denounce the policies of the former president and his followers. "Spring is coming three days early. Join us to wish that Milosevic never happens again," reads the message from a Belgrade civil rights group.
The socialists have threatened to topple Serbia's weak government for refusing to give Mr Milosevic a state funeral, although they won the right to display his coffin in Belgrade's Revolution Museum, where hundreds of people viewed it yesterday.
"He should have had a state funeral and a mausoleum like Tito," said Radomir Brankovic, referring to the former communist leader of Yugoslavia who is buried a few hundred metres from the museum. "He defended Serbia from the West, and now they have killed him," he said.
In Politika newspaper, Serb curators protested at the display of Mr Milosevic's coffin in the museum, and his opponents published a blistering indictment of his rule among dozens of glowing tributes.
"Thank you for the deceit and theft, for every drop of blood shed by thousands, for the fear and uncertainty, for the failed lives and generations, the unfulfilled dreams, for the horrors and wars you waged in our name," the farewell read.
"We remember those who were killed, and those who were injured. We remember the suffering ones, the refugees. We remember our destroyed lives."