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The rise and fall in Kosovo
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It was the thorny problem of Kosovo, the majority Albanian province that had served as his springboard to power, which finally set the stage for his downfall.
FORMER Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic was arrested on April 1 on charges of corruption and abuse of power.
Milosevic's defence lawyer, Toma Fila, on Monday said his client was de-pressed, on tranquillizers and scarcely able to believe what had befallen him over the past dramatic weekend.
Dusan Mihajlovic, the Serbian interior minister, said on Tuesday that Milosevic, 59, could be implicated in “ serious crimes" which are punishable by death.
But what the West was interested in was the chance of Milosevic being transferred soon to The Hague on war crimes charges for Serb actions against ethnic Albanians in Kosovo.
Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica on Tuesday ruled out any immediate transfer of Milosevic to the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague, the Netherlands.
Kostunica, who describes himself as a moderate nationalist and sees war crimes tribunal as anti-Serb, said Milosevic's responsibility for the calamities that befell Yugoslavia during his rule were “ enormous".
The charges against Milosevic allege that he ordered his minions to embezzle huge amounts of public money for personal profit and to help him stay on power.
Milosevic on Monday argued that he had used the money not for personal gain, but admitted for the first time the money was used to finance the armies of Bosnian and Croatian Serbs in their bloody wars in the early 1990s when the breakaway regions of republics sought independence from the former Yugoslavia.
Although suffering a humiliating de-feat in last year's elections, Milosevic still has his supporters. On March 31, hundreds of supporters thronged the gates to his villa, chanting “ Slobo! Slobo!" and taunting police.
Most were elderly rural peasants or working-class labourers. To them, the attempt to arrest Milosevic was a terrible injustice and an international conspiracy. Milosevic might be an indicted war crimes suspect, but to his hard-core faithful he was clearly beloved.
The US Congress made the arrest of Milosevic a condition for granting US＄ 50 million in aids to Yugoslavia. Many Serbs believe the Serbian Government was under US pressure to arrest not only Milosevic but also two other officials who have been accused of war crimes.
Many Western analysts say the breakup of Yugoslavia, which brought war to Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and then Kosovo was not the result of submerged ethnic hatreds but of the very real efforts of the country's politicians. More than any other leader, they say, Milosevic was blamed for the tragic events that swept the region.
He's an extraordinary political survivor whose 13 years in power were devoid of any real successes yet he remained not only in power, but by all accounts still was a hero of the Serb people until the elections of 2000.
Milosevic carved a place for himself in Yugoslav politics in Kosovo, the heart of Serbia's once great medieval past. Some say his success was very much owed to being in the right place at the right time.
As a high-level official of the Yugoslav Communist Party in 1987, he travelled to a suburb of Pristina, Kosovo's capital, to meet with delegates of the party. His meeting was interrupted by thousands of angry Serbs who claimed Serbs were second-class citizens in Kosovo and the Albanians had far too much authority.
As the police pushed the crowd of Serb demonstrators back, Milosevic told the crowd that “ No one will dare beat you again” .
He stayed talking with the Serbs for hours, hearing all their complaints about their fate in Kosovo. The hitherto almost non-entity with few of the skills to be a mass leader had become the saviour of the Serbs and Serbia.
Serbs'discontent with the status quo in Kosovo helped Milosevic catapult to power - first in Serbia, the largest and most powerful republic in Yugoslavia, and later to the presidency of Yugoslavia, now containing only Serbia and Montenegro.
Until Milosevic became the official spokesman of Serb discontent, there was little indication in his career that he was destined for greatness.
He was born in 1941 in Pozarevac, Serbia, of Montenegrin descent. Both his parents were teachers. Both also committed suicide, his father in 1962 and his mother in 1973.
While in high school, he was known as a loner with few friends. Also in high school, he met his future wife, Mirjana Markovic.
Milosevic studied law at the University of Belgrade. In 1984, he changed careers and entered politics. In 1989, Milosevic turned on his former mentor and friend Ivan Stambolic and replaced him as president of Serbia. He's been the key figure in the Balkans ever since.
Milosevic's determination to restore Serb control over a region considered as the historic heartland of Serbia seems based on his firm belief that the Serbs had suffered in Kosovo at the hands of the Albanians. Kosovo's autonomy was revoked in 1989.
It was the thorny problem of Kosovo, the majority Albanian pro-vince that had served as his springboard to power, which finally set the stage for his downfall. In February 1998, Milosevic sent troops to Kosovo trying to end an ethnic Albanian uprising.
The United States and its allies stepped in by imposing some of the sanctions that were lifted after the Bosnian war. In 1999, after Milosevic refused to sign a Western-dictated peace agreement at Rambouillet, France, Nato launched 78 days of air strikes against Yugoslavia.
Milosevic refused to back down but finally accepted a peace plan and handed over the province to the United Nations and Nato in June 1999.
Before the conflict ended, the UN war crimes tribunal indicted Milosevic and four of his top aides for war crimes and crimes against humanity allegedly committed in Kosovo. Milosevic became the first sitting head of state ever to be indicted for such crimes.
Although facing criminal prosecution, his term as Yugoslav president nearing its end and his country devastated, Milosevic sought to stay on power by pushing through a constitutional change last July to permit the election of president by popular vote rather than parliament.
Arguing that this exempted him from the traditional two-term limit, Milosevic stood for reelection.
But Milosevic had misjudged his popularity. Exhausted by years of war and political upheaval, Yugoslavs rallied around Kostunica, a colourless man but one with a reputation for integrity who held out the promise of a return to normalcy.
Kostunica's followers claimed their man won an absolute majority among the four candidates in the September 24 balloting. The Milosevic-controlled election commission admitted Kostunica finished first but without the necessary majority and scheduled a runoff.
On October 5, before the second ballot could be held, hundreds of thousands of people converged on Belgrade, setting off a daylong riot. The police and army refused to intervene, and Milosevic conceded defeat the following day.
He remained tucked in an opulent government villa in Belgrade's upscale Dedinje district until his arrest on early April 1. (SD-Agencies)
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