Milosevic loyalists pay tribute, mourn for Kosovo

By Staff
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Google Oneindia News

POZAREVAC, Serbia, Mar 10 (Reuters) Supporters marking the first anniversary of the death of Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic praised his Kosovo policy and said the reformers who ousted him would be to blame for the loss of the province.

Today memorial coincided with a final meeting in Vienna on the fate of Kosovo, run by the United Nations since NATO expelled Serbian troops in 1999 to stop them from driving out the 90 per cent Albanian majority.

A Western-backed plan by UN envoy Martti Ahtisaari sets the province on the path to independence, which Serb leaders reject.

Milosevic's supporters said the late President had only ''fought to preserve the country''.

''Those who have been criticising Milosevic for years over Kosovo ... have now adopted his stance, they do not accept its independence,'' said Ivica Dacic, Milosevic's successor as head of the once-powerful Socialist Party.

Milosevic was ousted in 2000 and sent to the UN tribunal in the Hague to answer charges of war crimes during the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s. He was found dead of heart failure in his cell at the court's detention unit on March 11, at age 64.

At the memorial, hundreds of supporters queued to leave flowers on the grave in the grounds of the Milosevic estate, some kissing the simple wooden cross bearing his name.

Many said he had been proven right.

''He's only been gone for a year and they are defending Kosovo with his ideas, '' said Ljiljana Pavlovic, 55.

Added Jovan Djordjevic, an ethnic Serb from Kosovo who fled to Serbia after the NATO intervention: ''If Milosevic were alive, Kosovo would be resolved honestly, honourably.'' They said Serbia's new rulers had bowed too much to Western pressure, with disastrous consequences, and blamed current Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica, the leader of the anti-Milosevic opposition in 2000.

Kostunica has become increasingly hardline in rejecting Kosovo's independence, saying that snatching territory from a democratic country is ''a crime against international law''.

''These people have backtracked in every way concerning Kosovo and now we are close to losing 15 per cent of our territory,'' said Milomir Stojicic, a teacher from south Serbia.

Milosevic's party now has low support among Serbs, but the ideals at the heart of his 12-year regime have survived in the policies of the Radicals, currently Serbia's most popular party.

In the memorial book outside the Milosevic estate, one mourner called him a ''hero of the Serb people who will live forever in our hearts''. Another bid farewell ''to you and the country that no longer exists''.

REUTERS MS PM2030

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