Pozarevac (Serbia-Montenegro): Serbia looked to turn the page on Slobodan Milosevic after burying the former Yugoslav leader at his family home, closing a bloody personal chapter in European history.
A week after his death while on trial for war crimes, he was laid to rest on Saturday under the linden tree where he first kissed his future wife, after a rain-swept ceremony attended by close allies but none of his close family.
Tens of thousands of Serbs -- more than 50,000 at a farewell rally in the capital Belgrade, and 20,000 more in his home town Pozarevac -- heaped praise on his leadership in a day his party managed to turn into a national event.
"It's finished," headlined the Blic newspaper. "The end of an era," agreed the tabloid Kurir.
It was a quiet end for a man whose 13-year autocratic regime and bully-boy nationalism shattered the Balkans at the cost of more than 200,000 lives, took his country into four wars and lost them all, ruined the economy and isolated himself and his nation from the international community.
The day's events leave Serbia at a critical juncture, with the government fretting over the influence of his death on a list of crucial issues it faces in 2006, notably how to edge further toward the European Union.
"Serbia is facing two possible paths towards the future. Black and white. There is no grey one," deputy prime minister Miroljub Labus wrote in a weekend newspaper column.
He said the choice was between international isolation, the loss of Kosovo and rising poverty on the one hand, and European integration, peace with its neighbours and economic development on the other.
"There is no middle way," Labus reiterated.
Milosevic died on March 11 of a heart attack while on trial at a UN court in The Hague on more than 60 charges, including genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity for his role in stoking the Balkans conflicts.
For many Serbs he brought shame on the nation but for those who turned out on Saturday, however, he remained a hero.
A brass band played funereal music as the Serbian flag that had draped his coffin was carefully folded and the casket lowered gently into the newly-dug tomb at the family home in Pozarevac, southeast of Belgrade.
"You have returned home to stay here for ever in this spot," his widow Mira Markovic said in a message read by a Milosevic party official.
Comments
0 comment