Stephen Coatessays Mr Milan Milutinovic's surrender to the Hague tribunal makes him the last of former Serb president Slobodan Milosevic's top allies to face war crimes charges.
Until December, when his five-year term as Serbian president expired, he was also that regime's last survivor in office, although he lost all authority after Mr Milosevic fell from power in October 2000.
Today he follows Mr Milosevic to The Hague, where both have been indicted for war crimes and crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. Mr Milosevic is also accused of genocide.
Mr Milutinovic first came to prominence in 1995 at the Dayton talks that ended three-and-a-half years of war in Bosnia. Two years later he became Serbian president, winning the election with Mr Milosevic's support.
In early 1999 he did Mr Milosevic's bidding at the Rambouillet talks in France, where the Yugoslav delegation's machinations resulted in NATO military action against Belgrade's forces in Kosovo.
It was during this time that Mr Milutinovic allegedly formed part of the inner circle which plotted the brutal oppression of ethnic Albanians in Kosovo, the restive southern province of Serbia.
Hundreds of thousands of ethnic Albanian civilians were driven from their homes in what Belgrade called "anti-terrorist" operations by Serb paramilitaries, police and Yugoslav army forces.
In his most recent interview, Mr Milutinovic said he did not feel guilty of war crimes and claimed he had not commanded either the Yugoslav army or the Serbian police in Kosovo.
AFP