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Milosevic to Be Buried in His Hometown NewsMax.com Wires BELGRADE, Serbia-Montenegro -- Slobodan Milosevic will be buried Saturday in his hometown of Pozarevac, the former Yugoslav president's political stronghold, a top leader of his Socialist Party said Wednesday as supporters prepared to receive the body in Belgrade. The announcement that Milosevic's funeral would be in Serbia followed several days of speculation about the venue, including the possibility that he could be buried in Moscow, where his widow, Mirjana Markovic, and son, Marko, live in self-imposed exile. It was not clear whether they would attend the funeral now it was to be held in Serbia. Zoran Andjelkovic, a deputy leader of the party, told The Associated Press that Milosevic's remains will be laid to rest in the backyard of his family home in the gritty industrial town about 30 miles southeast of Belgrade. Andjelkovic also confirmed that the body would be put on public view in the Serbian capital before the burial, displayed in a tent in front of the federal parliament building in the center of the capital. "Let them dare remove the tent," Andjelkovic said. Story Continues Below
He explained that the Socialists decided to put the body out in the street after they had been denied permission by the authorities to display the body inside the parliament building or at another unspecified location. The Socialists, who were ousted from power along with Milosevic in 2000, are hoping to make political gains from their leader's death at the detention unit of the U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands, where he was being tried on charges of war crimes and genocide. The Socialists had demanded a funeral with state honors at a cemetery reserved for prominent Serbs, but authorities rejected this demand, reflecting the controversy about the former president's legacy. Andjelkovic said Milosevic's body also will be put out for public viewing in the Pozarevac City Hall before the burial. Milosevic's followers hold municipal power in Pozarevac, unlike in Belgrade, where the city authorities are dominated by the pro-Western Democratic Party, led by President Boris Tadic. Earlier, Milorad Vucelic, vice president of Milosevic's Socialist Party, told AP that he and other party officials would receive the former president's remains at the Belgrade airport at around 3:30 p.m. Wednesday. The body would be flown to Belgrade from the Netherlands. Vucelic said Milosevic's Socialist Party had formed a "funeral committee" that was making all the preparations, including the public viewing of Milosevic's body. Also Wednesday, an allied ultranationalist party, the Serbian Radical Party, urged retired police and army officers to appear at the Milosevic funeral in ceremonial uniforms in a show of respect for the man who took them to four wars during his 13-year rule in Serbia. There are fears that nationalists could use the funeral to try win back power. In pressing for a Belgrade funeral, the Socialists threatened to topple the minority government if Milosevic were to be denied a funeral in Serbia and his wife was not allowed to mourn him at home. Milosevic's son Marko Milosevic went to the Netherlands on Tuesday to claim his father's remains. He will take the body to Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport on Wednesday before he returns to Moscow, Vucelic said. Vucelic could not say if the wife and son would attend, but Sergei Baburin, a Russian nationalist lawmaker, said in Moscow that Markovic would not travel to Serbia for the funeral because Serbian security guarantees were "insufficient." There was no immediate comment from Markovic, who fled to Russia in 2003. A Belgrade court on Tuesday suspended a warrant for her arrest - but ordered her passport to be seized upon arrival, which would prevent her from leaving the country immediately after the burial.
© 2006 Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Editor's note: Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:
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