Milosevic can't be written out of the plot just yet

Is Slobodan Milosevic finished? Absolutely not. Milosevic is famous for always having another trick up his sleeve.

But the election may give his opponents a boost in the sense that they can perceive themselves, at last, as legitimate rulers.

On previous occasions, they had plenty of gripes about Milosevic but, humiliatingly, they regularly failed to defeat him at the polls.

How long can he survive? It is possible that the death throes of the regime will be long drawn out.

Equally, however, the popular anger could grow so quickly in the days to come that his closest supporters are ready to desert him, in which case the whole house of cards will collapse.

Will the Army stay loyal? Milosevic certainly hopes so. His top generals are Milosevic loyalists through and through. If he falls, they fall - and a military coup is not generally reckoned to be likely.

More problematic for him is that the conscript Army has little reason to be loyal to Milosevic. It was one thing for Milosevic to send soldiers off to kill Albanians. Killing or shooting at fellow-Serbs in order to halt their protests is another matter.

What will he do if he steps down? A question that Milosevic no doubt asks himself in the middle of the night.

Communist leaders across eastern Europe were allowed to retire quietly after their fall from power. Some even went briefly to jail as penance for what they had done to their countries, and then back to the retirement villa.

But none of them faced prosecution as an international war criminal. Opposition leader Vojislav Kostunica has said that he does not wish to hand Milosevic over to the Hague. But he would be under considerable pressure to do just that.

What makes him an international war criminal? In commonsense terms, plenty.

From the slaughter in 1991 in the civilian-filled Croatian town of Vukovar to the bombing of Sarajevo and then the killing of thousands of Muslims at Srebrenica in 1995, most observers reckon that Milosevic was the key figure that made it possible for the nightmares to become real.

At that time, however, the West still regarded him as a "partner in dialogue." The warrant for his arrest was not issued until May 1999 - four years after Bosnia, eight years after Vukovar - because of his steering role in the atrocities and deportations in Kosovo.

Is he personally rich? The assumed answer is yes, though nobody knows the full details. In Serbia, he scarcely needs his personal wealth since everything that he desires is in any case his.

His son Marko has made a pile through smuggling and sanctions-busting.

Recent rumours claimed that substantial Milosevic funds were being transferred to Cyprus, with the implication that he was preparing a bolthole there. But international pressure on Cyprus would, however, make it almost impossible for Milosevic to go and live out his days there.

- INDEPENDENT