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RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil -- Slobodan Milosevic leaves a legacy as "one of the most malign forces in Europe in quite a long time," even though he died before the end of his four-year U.N. war crimes trial, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Sunday.

"Perhaps it would have been better" if he had lived to see a verdict in court, Rice said. "But history is going to move on ... toward resolution of these crises in the Balkans and the evolution of the people of the Balkans toward their European identity."

Milosevic, who died Saturday in The Hague, was reviled by the United States as "the butcher of the Balkans." He was a hero to many Serbs, despite losing four wars and impoverishing his people in the 1990s while trying to create a "Greater Serbia" linking Serbia with Serb-dominated areas of Croatia and Bosnia.

He was on trial for orchestrating a decade of conflict that killed 250,000 people and tore apart the Yugoslav federation. No verdict will be issued now.

"I do think there is a sense in which some feel that they wish there had been the opportunity to bring him to justice and to have the final verdict of history be in the courts, but I think the final verdict of history about Milosevic is pretty clear," Rice told reporters on a flight from Santiago, Chile, to Rio de Janeiro, where her plane was refueling for a trip to Indonesia.

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"He was one of the most malign forces in Europe in quite a long time, I think undoubtedly responsible for the deaths of many, many people and responsible for policies that led ultimately to the breakup of his country and the estrangement of parts of it from the international system for quite a long time," Rice said.

"The good news is that even on that basis, that malign foundation, good things have started to rise," she said.

© 2006 Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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