Milosevic burial fires nationalist resurgence

SERBS have buried Slobodan Milosevic amid an outpouring of nationalist sentiment, but the question on many minds was whether Serbia has also laid to rest its recent bloody past.

With Milosevic gone, officials and analysts warned that the republic must choose whether to break with the late Serb leader’s warmongering legacy or risk a slide back into nationalism and isolation that marked more than a decade of his ruinous rule.

“This is a serious moment,” said Vesna Pesic, a key leader of the October 2000 uprising that toppled Milosevic and sent him to the UN war crimes tribunal a year later. “The blatant glorification of Milosevic is a big danger for the country.”

Pro-Western deputy prime minister Miroljub Labus warned Serbs must choose a brighter path that would enable the republic to join mainstream Europe.

“I sincerely hope Milosevic’s vision for Serbia will be laid to rest together with him,” Mr Labus said in comments carried in the state-run Politika daily. He urged Serbs to “think to tomorrow’s generation” and fulfil the responsibility of handing over the remaining most-wanted war crimes fugitives to the UN court - Bosnian Serb wartime leader Radovan Karadzic and top commander, General Ratko Mladic.

Serbia’s dilemma was highlighted by the swell of nationalist bravado at Milosevic’s farewell ceremony in Belgrade that drew at least 80,000 die-hard supporters before his coffin was taken for burial in his hometown of Pozarevac on Saturday.

Milosevic was laid to rest beneath a tree in the back garden of the family estate in an anticlimactic end to one of the bloodiest chapters in the turbulent history of the Balkans.

His flag-draped coffin was lowered into a double grave with a place for his widow, Mirjana Markovic, who reportedly wants to join him when she dies.

Ms Markovic and the rest of Milosevic’s immediate family chose not to attend.

Among the supporters in Pozarevac were several indicted war crimes suspects on temporary leave from the UN tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands. One, retired General Dragoljub Ojdanic, wore his military uniform.

Speakers extolled Milosevic’s alleged virtues, proclaiming him “Serbia’s greatest son” who valiantly fought against Western “imperialists”.

“Our Serbia will rise like a phoenix from the ashes. It will forever be proud of you and your legacy,” read a letter to Milosevic by Vojislav Seselj, Serbian ultranationalist leader in custody at The Hague.

Milorad Vucelic, deputy president of Milosevic’s Socialist Party, pledged it would carry on his struggle. “The death of our commander restored our strength. Serbia has raised its head again,” Vucelic said.

But Zarko Korac, of the opposition Social Democrats Union, said the nationalists were simply trying to cash in on Milosevic’s death for political gain. Their efforts, he insisted, were doomed to fail.

“After four lost wars and thousands of killed and ruined lives, Serbs have firmly rejected Milosevic’s disastrous politics. He is history,” Mr Korac said. “There is a strong democratic alternative today in Serbia. But it must get its act together.”