World - Milosevic 'would never killed have himself'

World - Milosevic 'would never killed have himself'
Morning Star - March 16, 2006, Thursday

Ex-Yugoslav prime minister Momir Bulatovic said yesterday that Slobodan Milosevic had said the day before he died that he would "never dream of self-medicating or poisoning himself to take his own life."

Mr Bulatovic, who was one of the former Yugoslav president's closest friends, spent the three last days of Mr Milosevic's life with him at the international war crimes tribunal.

The two were preparing for Mr Bulatovic's upcoming testimony as a defence witness in the war crimes and genocide case against Mr Milosevic.

Mr Bulatovic said that Mr Milosevic had been confident that the testimony would "clinch his defence with irrefutable evidence" that the 1990s Yugoslav bloodletting was "not a criminal enterprise orchestrated by Milosevic but a chain of irreversible events" that tore apart the former federation.

A Dutch autopsy determined that Mr Milosevic had died from a massive heart attack.

A Dutch toxicologist later said that he had found traces of an unprescribed drug in Mr Milosevic's blood earlier this year which reduced the effectiveness of his other medications.