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Slobodan Milosevic has spoken defiantly from his prison cell in The Hague amid continuing tension in Belgrade since his extradition.

According to a member of his defence team, the former Yugoslav president told his wife Mira Markovic that he rejected the trial as "politically motivated".

The president of the war crimes tribunal in The Hague, Claude Jorda, has said the trial will not begin for another eight to 12 months, and is likely to last for over a year.

Mr Milosevic - who is due to make his first court appearance on Tuesday - said he would deny all the war crimes charges against him.

In Belgrade, police fired shots into the air on Saturday to quell an outbreak of violence in the city centre.

A group of skinheads and chanting Serbian nationalists attacked a peaceful march by gay and lesbian rights activists, kicking and beating them. At least five people were injured, some of them seriously.

Turmoil

Mr Milosevic's departure has triggered political turmoil in Yugoslavia.

His supporters - who demonstrated in Belgrade on Friday - said they would intensify their protests next week.

His extradition has jeopardised the fragile cohabitation of reformists and old-school politicians within the Yugoslav federation.

And it has pitched the two leaders of the democratic movement - the Yugoslav President, Vojislav Kostunica, and the Serbian Prime Minister, Zoran Djindjic - against each other.

All the Montenegrin members of the coalition have resigned, including the Yugoslav Prime Minister, Zoran Zizic.

But Mr Zizic's Montenegrin People's Party said it would join talks on Monday aimed at forming a new government.

Isolation

The UN tribunal is keeping Mr Milosevic in isolation, away from the 38 other war crimes suspects from the former Yugoslavia.

Mr Milosevic is accused of having ultimate responsibility for the mass deportation of 740,000 Kosovo Albanians and for the murder of hundreds of individually named Albanians, said to have been committed by Serb soldiers and militias.

Further charges are also being drawn up against him relating to the wars in Croatia and Bosnia.

One of his Belgrade lawyers said Mr Milosevic had asked for money, clothes and some books.

Speaking by phone from his cell to his wife, Mr Milosevic proclaimed his innocence, saying he had worked as president in the interests of the Serbian people.

If he had the job again, he is reported as saying, he would act in the same way.

According to Mrs Markovic, the former president is in "fantastic" psychological condition.

Disbelief

New details have emerged about his last moments in Serbia.

The Belgrade weekly newspaper Nedeljni Telegraf said his last words before leaving Serbia were: "Brother Serbs, now farewell!"

The paper, which is said to have good contacts with the Serbian security forces, said Mr Milosevic refused to believe he was being extradited to the war crimes tribunal, even as he was packing his bag.

When a prison warden in Belgrade told him he was going to the tribunal, Mr Milosevic reportedly said: "The Hague? Ridiculous!" And he kept repeating that to himself.

"Am I really going to The Hague?" he kept asking, according to the paper.

It said Mr Milosevic first learned of his impending extradition at 1520 (1320 GMT) on Thursday, when Serbian justice officials arrived at the prison in Belgrade.

Departure

Later he was taken to a state security compound in a Belgrade suburb, where officials from the war crimes tribunal were waiting.

Mr Milosevic told them the tribunal was a "political circus aimed at jeopardising the Serb people".

He said he was being "kidnapped," and that the tribunal would answer for its crimes.