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.
WAITING GAME: The US has so far only offered a ‘best rate tariff,’ which officials assume is about 15 percent, the same as Japan, a person familiar with the matter said Taiwan and the US have completed “technical consultations” regarding tariffs and a finalized rate is expected to be released soon, Executive Yuan spokeswoman Michelle Lee (李慧芝) told a news conference yesterday, as a 90-day pause on US President Donald Trump’s “reciprocal” tariffs is set to expire today. The two countries have reached a “certain degree of consensus” on issues such as tariffs, nontariff trade barriers, trade facilitation, supply chain resilience and economic security, Lee said. They also discussed opportunities for cooperation, investment and procurement, she said. A joint statement is still being negotiated and would be released once the US government has made
NEW GEAR: On top of the new Tien Kung IV air defense missiles, the military is expected to place orders for a new combat vehicle next year for delivery in 2028 Mass production of Tien Kung IV (Sky Bow IV) missiles is expected to start next year, with plans to order 122 pods, the Ministry of National Defense’s (MND) latest list of regulated military material showed. The document said that the armed forces would obtain 46 pods of the air defense missiles next year and 76 pods the year after that. The Tien Kung IV is designed to intercept cruise missiles and ballistic missiles to an altitude of 70km, compared with the 60km maximum altitude achieved by the Missile Segment Enhancement variant of PAC-3 systems. A defense source said yesterday that the number of
‘CRUDE’: The potential countermeasure is in response to South Africa renaming Taiwan’s representative offices and the insistence that it move out of Pretoria Taiwan is considering banning exports of semiconductors to South Africa after the latter unilaterally downgraded and changed the names of Taiwan’s two representative offices, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) said yesterday. On Monday last week, the South African Department of International Relations and Cooperation unilaterally released a statement saying that, as of April 1, the Taipei Liaison Offices in Pretoria and Cape Town had been renamed the “Taipei Commercial Office in Johannesburg” and the “Taipei Commercial Office in Cape Town.” Citing UN General Assembly Resolution 2758, it said that South Africa “recognizes the People’s Republic of China (PRC) as the sole
Taiwanese exports to the US are to be subject to a 20 percent tariff starting on Thursday next week, according to an executive order signed by US President Donald Trump yesterday. The 20 percent levy was the same as the tariffs imposed on Vietnam, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh by Trump. It was higher than the tariffs imposed on Japan, South Korea and the EU (15 percent), as well as those on the Philippines (19 percent). A Taiwan official with knowledge of the matter said it is a "phased" tariff rate, and negotiations would continue. "Once negotiations conclude, Taiwan will obtain a better
RSS