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`Butcher of the Balkans' died unrepentant

Former Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic, found dead in his prison bed on Saturday, defied international sanctions and NATO bombs over nearly a decade of strife in the former Yugoslavia and was unmoved by accusations of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The "Butcher of the Balkans" stoked conflicts that left more than 200,000 people dead, up to three million homeless and the Serbian economy in ruins.

But he made no apologies for his actions in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo, where his drive for a Greater Serbia "cleansed" of Croats and Muslims sparked a rash of grisly massacres and finally a showdown with the West.

"I'm proud for everything I did in defending my country and my people," he told US television network Fox News in a phone interview in 2001 from his jail outside The Hague, where he was awaiting trial.

"All my decisions are legitimate and legal, based on the Constitution of Yugoslavia and based on the rights to self-defense."

Milosevic portrayed himself as a besieged statesman who struggled to keep the crumbling Yugoslav federation intact against separatists and "terrorists."

He started as a faceless Communist minion, later fashioned himself into a successful businessman and technocrat, and bullied his way into political prominence as a ruthless champion of the Serbian cause.

Western officials were often caught flatfooted by Milosevic, who was widely seen both as the source of Balkan tensions but also the key to regional peace in 1995.

Richard Holbrooke, who brokered the 1995 Dayton peace accords to end the Bosnian war remembered him as a negotiator who could be "smart, charming and evasive."

But the pendulum swung definitively after Milosevic's crackdown on ethnic Albanians in Kosovo in 1999. Many then adopted US Senator Joseph Biden's view that he was "one of the most dangerous and maniacal European leaders since Hitler."

Milosevic was born on August 20, 1941, in the eastern Serbian town of Pozarevac, the son of an Orthodox priest and ardently communist schoolteacher.

He graduated from Belgrade University with a law degree and climbed through the ruling ranks of Tito's Yugoslavia, developing a reputation as a communist "apparatchik's apparatchik."

Milosevic headed both the state-run gas company and the state-run bank. But he was still a relatively little-known official until April 24, 1987.

On that day he was summoned to help calm a crowd of Kosovar Serbs protesting mistreatment by the province's Albanian majority. As riot police beat back the throng, Milosevic was anything but calming.

"No one has the right to beat you. No one will ever beat you again," he raged from a nearby balcony. The Serb battle cry was born and ethnic hatreds that had been welling up since Tito's death in 1980 were unleashed.

Milosevic took over as president of the Serbian republic in 1989, quickly revoking Kosovo's autonomous status and ratcheting up the Serbs' jingoistic spirit as Yugoslavia broke apart in 1991.

As president of Serbia and later head of the rump Yugoslav republic that joined it with Montenegro, Milosevic was a cunning leader who used the state media to the hilt to inflame Serb passions and stifle dissent.

But after the wars in Croatia and Bosnia, the ethnic cleansing campaign in Kosovo and the 11 weeks of NATO airstrikes it prompted were the last straw for a beleaguered Yugoslav people.

Increasingly targeted by demonstrations and strikes, Milosevic ran for a new term as Yugoslav president but the machinery no longer worked for him. He conceded defeat and resigned on Oct. 7, 2000.

Six months later he was arrested on suspicion of abuse of power and misappropriation of state funds, surrendering only after holding a gun to his head and threatening to kill himself.

His transfer to the UN war crimes court in The Hague back in 2001 hardly produced a ripple in Belgrade.

His trial, which began in 2002, was frequently interrupted because of illness sparked by high blood pressure and heart problems.

It was due to resume tomorrow after a two-week break, caused this time by problems in scheduling witnesses.

Insisting on defending himself, Milosevic concentrated almost totally on events in Kosovo, hardly going into the charges related to the war in Croatia and the genocide charges against him over the war in Bosnia.

According to the last calculations Milosevic had already used up 85.11 percent of the 360 hours allotted to him for his defense, meaning he only had about a dozen court days left to complete his defense case.
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