Milosevic died of heart attack: UN

The Hague: Former Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic died of a heart attack, the UN war crimes court said, but refused to completely rule out a poisoning theory as it prepared his body for release on Monday.

After a day of swirling rumours over the death of the man at the centre of the bloody Balkans conflict, the tribunal in The Hague announced that initial autopsy results showed he had died of a myocardial infarction.

Commonly known as a heart attack, this is caused by a blood clot blocking a coronary artery, leading to the death of heart muscle.

A statement said pathologists had identified two heart conditions that he suffered from and which "would explain the myocardial infarction."

The autopsy was carried out amid reports that Milosevic, who had a history of heart problems, may have been poisoned or taken his own life.

He was found dead in his cell on Saturday at the court, where he had been on trial since February 2002 on more than 60 counts of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity during the Balkans conflicts.

The charges included the Srebrenica massacre of 8,000 Muslim men and boys, the biggest single atrocity in Europe since World War II.

Serbian experts who attended the autopsy declared their satisfaction at how it had been conducted by Dutch pathologists.

A toxicological examination was still being carried out and a final autopsy report will be issued as soon as possible, the court said.

"It is too early to reach any sort of conclusion," a tribunal spokeswoman, Alexandra Milenov, said when asked whether Milosevic had been poisoned, as his entourage has charged.

"The investigations are still ongoing," she said. "We don't expect a final report for a couple of days."

A tribunal statement said the former Serb leader's body would be released to his family on Monday.

Milosevic's widow Mirjana Markovic said the tribunal had effectively killed her husband "because they didn't have enough (proof) to convict him, and they couldn't let him go."

"He was terribly exhausted and everything was pointing toward what happened on Saturday," she told Serbia's Vecernje Novosti daily in an interview on Monday.

"Perhaps there were other measures which shortened his life," she went on, adding that she had last spoken to him late on Friday.

"He told me, 'sleep well my darling. I'll call you as soon as I wake up in the morning'."

Earlier, Dutch NOS television reported that recent analyses had discovered "foreign substances" in Milosevic's blood.

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It said that they neutralized the effects of medication he was prescribed for blood pressure and heart problems.

Milosevic's legal adviser, Zdenko Tomanovic, said the former president had written a day before his death that he feared being poisoned.

"'They would like to poison me. I'm seriously concerned and worried'," he quoted Milosevic as writing.

Serbian President Boris Tadic ruled out a state funeral and said he would not pardon Milosevic's widow, meaning she would be unable to return home for any ceremony.

His office said a state funeral would be "completely inappropriate because of the role he played in Serbia's recent history" as well as contrary to the wishes of the Serbian people.

Markovic, who faces arrest warrant for abuse of office if she returns home, told Vecernje Novosti she had still not decided where he should be buried.

"If it was only up to me to decide it would be Pozarevac," a town about 80 kilometres (50 miles) east of Belgrade.

But, she said, "I am still the hostage of an Interpol arrest warrant."

According to media reports Markovic left Serbia in 2003 to escape prosecution and fled to Russia where her son Marko is also said to be residing.

In Belgrade, Foreign Minister Vuk Draskovic said he was "ashamed" how much praise Milosevic loyalists were lavishing on their late idol.

Dozens of hardcore supporters queued to pay tribute in front of his party seat in central Belgrade, where a large photograph of Milosevic and a book of condolences lay on a table in the entrance hall.

"Slobo, Serbia has died with you," said a written message placed nearby.

In Bijeljina, in the Bosnian Serb entity Republika Srpksa, candles were lit near a monument where posters of Milosevic were plastered. "Heroes never die" and "We love you," they read.

"By promoting a serial killer into a national hero," Draskovic told Tanjug news agency, "his victims are murdered again and Serbia disgraces itself... as the state in which crime is a supreme virtue."

UN chief war crimes prosecutor Carla Del Ponte said it was now more urgent than ever to arrest other war crimes fugitives: former Bosnian Serb army chief Ratko Mladic and political leader Radovan Karadzic.