Even in death Slobodan Milosevic could not tread a straight path. There was confusion yesterday over the destination of the body of the former president of Yugoslavia following a day of conflicting reports about the venue for his funeral.

The only certainty was his overnight resting place: the morgue at Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport. From there his body will be flown either to Russia for burial or a possible second autopsy, or his family’s preferred destination of Belgrade.

The uncertainty was compounded by apparent disputes between members of the Milosevic family.

An element of farce entered the proceedings yesterday, four days after his death from a heart attack in his cell in The Hague. The Dutch authorities and the U.N. International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia tried to avoid responsibility for the remains. As Milosevic’s son Marko took delivery of his father’s body, the Dutch foreign ministry said inquiries about the corpse should be referred to the ICTY or Dutch customs, as it was now freight. The ICTY, meanwhile, said the matter was a Dutch government responsibility.

The body was removed in a people carrier from the Dutch national forensic institute, where it had lain since an autopsy carried out by Dutch pathologists on Sunday. The procedure had been questioned by the Russians. The heir to the Milosevic name was equally suspicious as he flew from his home in Moscow, saying he had no doubt his father had been murdered.

Before the start of Milosevic’s last journey, a team of Russian pathologists examined the findings of the Dutch post-mortem. The head of Moscow’s Bakulev clinic and leader of the team, Leo Bokeria, said Milosevic’s life could have been saved with proper treatment. “The point is that a man who had suffered from a complex of illnesses of the heart and vascular system was not examined adequately. Naturally he could not be cured,” he said.

The controversy surrounding the final resting place continued in Belgrade with contradictory reports and disagreement within his family.

A funeral in the Serb capital appeared likely after a court there withdrew an arrest warrant on his widow, Miss Markovic, who is wanted for alleged corruption. That would allow her to travel from exile in Moscow to her husband’s graveside.

But there was a sting in the tail: The court insisted that in return for her liberty Miss Markovic, always considered as the power behind the Milosevic throne, would have to surrender her passport. That would leave her open to arrest for much more serious offenses such as alleged links to the plot to murder a former Serb president, Ivan Stambolic, a former patron of Milosevic killed in 2000.