Mira Markovic stays in Moscow despite being wanted by the Serbiam police

Maria Milosevic has telephoned her mother, wife of ex-Yugoslavian President Solobodan Milosevic Mira Markovic, that she might be added to the international wanted persons' list unless she leaves Moscow and returns to Belgrade.

The Serbian interior ministry reported on Saturday that Mira Markovich, Chairwoman of the Yugoslavian Leftists' Party, was in Russia and had been advised through a lawyer to return home immediately and come to the police. Unless Markovic returns to Yugoslavia immediately, she will be added to the international wanted persons' list, said the report.

The Serbian police want to interrogate Markovic in connection with the assassination of ex-Chairman of the Serbian Presidium Ivan Stambolic.

In a Sunday interview with the newspaper Publika, Milosevic's daughter said her mother had traveled to Moscow to meet with her son Marko who is living there. "She often flies to the Hague from Moscow to see father," she said.

Maria told the newspaper that Mira Markovic had left Belgrade for Moscow on February 23 "with effective police-certified papers" as she had done many times before. The trip was a "private family affair," she remarked.

She added that her mother was a professor of the Moscow Lomonosov University.

According to her words, any attempts to flee are out of the question. "Mother often travels and always has a packed suitcase by her door," said Maria, adding that her mother usually spent several months in Moscow and the police were perfectly aware of that.