THE HAGUE, March 11: Former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic has died, the UN tribunal said on Saturday, just months before the expected conclusion of his trial for war crimes in the Balkans wars in the 1990s.

“Milosevic was found lifeless on his bed in his cell,” a statement by tribunal said.

The UN court said the Dutch police and a Dutch coroner were called in and started an inquiry. A full autopsy and toxicological examination had been ordered and Milosevic’s family informed, it said.

Milosevic, 64, rose to power in the vacuum left by the 1980 death of post-World War II Yugoslav leader Marshal Tito. Elected Serbia’s president in 1990, he ruled with an iron grip until his overthrow in 2000.

“With the death of Milosevic, one of the main actors, if not the main actor, in the Balkan wars … has left the scene,” French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy said, adding that Milosevic had died of natural causes.

Milosevic was charged with 66 counts of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes in complex indictments covering bloody conflicts in Bosnia, Croatia and Kosovo as Yugoslavia imploded in the 1990s. He had declined to enter a plea.

As news of the death swept through the Balkans, an official of Milosevic’s Socialist Party, Zoran Andjelkovic, said: “We expect the tribunal to explain how was it possible, and why they did not let him have treatment in Russia”.

Another Socialist party official, reached on his car phone, said simply: “They killed him.”

Mr Milosevic was the highest profile suspect at the Hague tribunal, which is still hunting six accused, among them former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic and his commander Ratko Mladic, both charged with genocide.—Reuters