Slobodan Milosevic's Socialist party threatened yesterday to topple Serbia's minority government if the former Yugoslav president was not buried with state honors in Belgrade and if his widow was not allowed to attend.
Meanwhile, a Belgrade court dismissed a request by Milosevic family attorneys to waive an arrest warrant for the ex-president's widow to enable her to return from Russia for the funeral.
"We do not have the legal authority to do so, only a president can," Ivana Ranic, District Court spokeswoman, said.
Serbia's pro-Western President Boris Tadic said late on Sunday that it was "absolutely inappropriate" for Milosevic to be buried with honors because it was Serbs who had toppled him in massive street protests in October 2000.
Tadic also declined to pardon Milosevic's wife, Mirjana Markovic, who lives in self-imposed exile in Moscow and faces detention at home on charges of abuse of office during her husband's rule.
A state funeral would involve Serbia-Montenegro army guardsmen providing an honor escort at the ceremony, but the country's Supreme Defense Council announced yesterday it was banning the use of the military in Milosevic's funeral.
Counting on a huge turnout, the Socialists have said Milosevic should be buried at Belgrade cemetery's "Alley of Heroes" -- the graveyard reserved for prominent Serbs. The alternative, they said, would be his birthplace of Pozarevac, some 50km east of Belgrade.
Milosevic's body was found in his bed early on Saturday at the UN detention center at The Hague, Netherlands, where he had been on trial on war crimes and genocide charges stemming from the Balkan ethnic bloodletting of the 1990s.
An autopsy on Sunday showed the former Yugoslav president, long ailing from a heart condition and high blood pressure, had died of a massive heart attack, the UN war crimes tribunal said.
However, a Dutch toxicologist confirmed yesterday he found traces of a non-prescribed drug in a blood sample taken from Milosevic earlier this year.
Also in the Netherlands, Milosevic's legal adviser Zdenko Tomanovic said the ex-president's remains would be claimed by his son Marko either yesterday or today.
The US government has signed defense cooperation agreements with Japan and the Philippines to boost the deterrence capabilities of countries in the first island chain, a report by the National Security Bureau (NSB) showed. The main countries on the first island chain include the two nations and Taiwan. The bureau is to present the report at a meeting of the legislature’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee tomorrow. The US military has deployed Typhon missile systems to Japan’s Yamaguchi Prefecture and Zambales province in the Philippines during their joint military exercises. It has also installed NMESIS anti-ship systems in Japan’s Okinawa
‘WIN-WIN’: The Philippines, and central and eastern European countries are important potential drone cooperation partners, Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung said Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) in an interview published yesterday confirmed that there are joint ventures between Taiwan and Poland in the drone industry. Lin made the remark in an exclusive interview with the Chinese-language Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister paper). The government-backed Taiwan Excellence Drone International Business Opportunities Alliance and the Polish Chamber of Unmanned Systems on Wednesday last week signed a memorandum of understanding in Poland to develop a “non-China” supply chain for drones and work together on key technologies. Asked if Taiwan prioritized Poland among central and eastern European countries in drone collaboration, Lin
NO CONFIDENCE MOTION? The premier said that being toppled by the legislature for defending the Constitution would be a democratic badge of honor for him Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) yesterday announced that the Cabinet would not countersign the amendments to the local revenue-sharing law passed by the Legislative Yuan last month. Cho said the decision not to countersign the amendments to the Act Governing the Allocation of Government Revenues and Expenditures (財政收支劃分法) was made in accordance with the Constitution. “The decision aims to safeguard our Constitution,” he said. The Constitution stipulates the president shall, in accordance with law, promulgate laws and issue mandates with the countersignature of the head of the Executive Yuan, or with the countersignatures of both the head of the Executive Yuan and ministers or
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