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.”