Thousands of Serbs bid farewell to Milosevic

BELGRADE, Mar 18 (Reuters) Tens of thousands of Serbs gathered in central Belgrade TOday to pay their last respects to Slobodan Milosevic ahead of his burial, a week after he died in his cell at the UN war crimes tribunal.

Pro-democracy activists who ousted Milosevic six years ago threatened to hold their own rally nearby later in the day in an effort to show that diehard nationalists no longer hold sway.

Supporters of the former president, a central figure in the Balkan wars of the 1990s which killed at least 150,000 people and forced millions to flee their homes, waved banners and flags as they demonstrated outside the federal parliament in Belgrade.

The rally was organised by Milosevic's Socialist Party of Serbia.

But supporters of the ultra-nationalist Radical Party, whose leader Vojislav Seselj is awaiting trial at the war crimes tribunal in The Hague, were also out in force.

''Today we are bidding farewell to the best man among us,'' senior Socialist official Milorad Vucelic told the crowd.

''I am asking you to do this in a dignified way, in his name.'' The mourners held a minute's silence and then broke into cries of ''Slobo, Slobo!'' and ''This is Serbia!'' The former strongman was denied the state funeral his supporters said he had a right to. But they made sure he lay on public display in Belgrade since Thursday as if lying in state.

The coffin draped in a Serbian flag was moved from an out-of-the-way museum to the scene of the rally, the same place where huge crowds of fist-waving Serbs brought down Milosevic in October 2000, yelling their slogan ''He's finished!'' BACK GARDEN BURIAL Milosevic, who died last Saturday of heart failure aged 64, is to be laid to rest in the afternoon in the garden of his family's provincial home in Pozarevac, east of Belgrade.

At the same hour as the interment, pro-Western activists plan to hold an anti-Milosevic rally in the capital. They have urged supporters to carry balloons to identify themselves.

They say this ''celebration'' of Milosevic has gone too far and aim to prove once and for all that they outnumber his dwindling loyalists -- except perhaps in years of age.

The Serb Orthodox Church, which never wavered in its support for Milosevic's hardline brand of nationalism, is on the Socialist side and will administer at the burial, something of a surprise for a man who was a lifelong communist.

The grave lies under an old lime tree where Milosevic is said to have first kissed Mira Markovic, the childhood sweetheart who became his wife and partner in power.

She and their son Marko fear arrest or worse if they return to Serbia and have chosen not to, Socialist Party officials said yesterday. They said threats had been made against them.

Opponents published a hard-hitting memorial yesterday to counter diehard loyalists lauding him as fallen hero who ''battled like a giant'' and would ''sleep with the angels''.

The former anti-Milosevic resistance movement Otpor criticized the government and media for acquiescing in ''celebrating the name and deeds of Slobodan Milosevic''.

''All of us citizens of Serbia must resist the hysteria that threatens to make a leader and a saint out of Milosevic ... he's finished, but his cohorts are trying to make a comeback.'' REUTERS DKS PM1735