The funeral

Divided and exiled, family have yet to agree a final resting place

Divided and isolated as they had been throughout Slobodan Milosevic's five years in prison, the former Yugoslav leader's family could not agree yesterday on where he should be buried.

His wife Mira and son Marko, who live as fugitives in seclusion in Russia, said they wanted him to be buried there, according to Serbia's Beta news agency. His daughter Marija called for him to buried in the small Adriatic republic of Montenegro where she has her home, while his brother Borislav, the only close relative to talk regularly to the media, said Serbia was the right place.

"Sooner or later", he would be buried in Serbia. "That is certain," he told the Guardian in Moscow where he has a business. The family would decide over the next 24 hours, he added.

Mira Markovic, the former president's widow, was extremely close to her husband and a politician in her own right. One reason why Mr Milosevic travelled remarkably little while in power was so that he could be with her every night, and it was undoubtedly a major blow to both of them that she had not felt it safe to visit him in prison in Holland since 2003.

She fled to Russia to escape an international arrest warrant issued in Serbia for abuse of power. The warrant would have to be waived temporarily to allow her back for a Serbian funeral.

Puritanical and always dressed in black, she and her husband presided over a dysfunctional family and two children who loved glamour and wealth.

Marko was involved in thuggish business practices in Pozarevac, the small town south of Belgrade where the family lived before Mr Milosevic became a national leader. He also fled to Russia later, splitting from the mother of his child, also called Marko. This grandson and his mother were the only family members who continued to pay occasional visits to Mr Milosevic in prison.

Marija never came. It was not clear whether she had broken with her father or was still upset at his arrest and humiliation. She fired a pistol at arresting officers as her father was led away to jail in Belgrade in March 2001 after a 36-hour standoff with special police at his villa. She was charged and received an eight-month suspended sentence.

She appears to have lost any affection for her mother and brother. She told a Serbian journalist who rang her shortly after Mr Milosevic's death that she did not want to see either again.

Borislav, who Mr Milosevic once appointed as Yugoslav ambassador to Russia, said he spoke with him on Thursday. "He was full of energy and ready to fight," he said. He had "no intentions" of taking his own life. "It is absolute rubbish - what suicide? These are stunts of the tribunal."

His death was the result of "the exhausting court process that has already been going for over four years. There was inadequate medicine; his pills were against hypertension but it did not resolve the issue; it all progressed," Borislav said. His doctors had told the tribunal his condition was "critical". Their demands for treatment in Moscow were refused.

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