A Serb court yesterday cleared the way for the widow of Slobodan Milosevic to return from exile to Serbia if his funeral is held in Belgrade, a court statement said.
"The presiding judge in the case has accepted the guarantees offered so that Mirjana Markovic ... will not be arrested in accordance with the warrants issued against her," it said.
But she "will be detained and placed in custody if she fails to appear at a hearing and does not justify her absence," the statement added.
"On arrival in the country the accused's passport will be confiscated," it said.
Mira Markovic fled to Moscow in 2003 to avoid charges of abuse of power. Markovic, considered the power behind the scenes during Milosevic's autocratic rule in the 1990s, has said she would return to Serbia only if the arrest warrant, filed by the court because of her alleged abuse of power during Milosevic's reign, was lifted.
Three days after Milosevic was found dead in his prison cell near the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands, it appeared increasingly probable that his body would be returned to Serbia for a politically charged funeral that could be a rallying point for nationalists.
But Milosevic's son, Marko, who was in The Hague to claim the body, raised the possibility of a temporary burial in Russia.
Marko, who lives in Russia with Markovic, told reporters at Moscow's airport before boarding a flight for The Hague that "Belgrade authorities don't allow [the burial]."
There were fears that a massive funeral in Serbia could be used by nationalists to launch an attempt to climb back to power more than five years after Milosevic was toppled in a massive pro-democracy revolt.
Many around the world blame Milosevic's 13-year reign for a series of wars that killed hundreds of thousands.
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