Zarko Korac, Serbia's Deputy Prime Minister, swore down the telephone to me that the fact that Slobodan Milosevic was extradited to the Hague war crimes tribunal on the most sacred day in the Serbian calendar was 'pure coincidence!' Really?
The conventional Western view is that the ex-President was extradited on 28 June because an aid donors' conference, at which Yugoslavia was to raise $1.28 billion dollars, was taking place the next day. It is a rational, cynical, view and no doubt there is some truth in it.
But can it really be just a coincidence that last Thursday was Vidovdan - St Vitus' Day - on which, with uncanny regularity, the most momentous events of Serbian history have often taken place?
Pro-Milosevic demonstrators took to the streets last Friday, chanting: 'Treachery, treachery!' A Westerner might take this at face value. But Serbs know this call goes right to the heart of the nation's soul.
Imagine the scene: It is 27 June 1389. As the epic tales have it Prince Lazar, the Serbian leader, dines with his knights before the fateful Battle of Kosovo in which he will be defeated by the Turks. A knight springs up to say that the next day one of their side, Milos Obilic, will betray Lazar. Obilic defends himself like this:
Tomorrow is lovely St Vitus day
And we shall see in Kosovo field
Who is faithful and who is the traitor.
As Yugoslavia's government breaks up over the Milosevic extradition, as his former allies resign in protest, is it possible that while we see a cabinet table, they see Lazar's dining table - one which, in Serbian myth, has always resembled, and pointedly so, Christ's last supper?
So, on Vidovdan 1389, Lazar fell in battle but Obilic killed the Turkish Sultan. The battle ushered in centuries of Ottoman domination but Lazar's tomb became a place of pilgrimage, especially on Vidovdan.
On 28 June 1889, the five hundredth anniversary of the battle, 30,000 pilgrims came to pay homage.
On 28 June 1914 Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated in Sarajevo by Gavrilo Princip, a young Bosnian Serb. The result was a war that engulfed not just Serbia but the world. Princip said later he had been outraged that the heir to the Austro-Hungarian monarchy should insult Serbs by choosing Vidovdan as the day to visit the Bosnian capital.
'This fact fired me with zeal to carry out the attempt. Our folklore tradition tells how Milos Obilic was accused before Vidovdan that he was a traitor and how he answered... '
Seven years later, on Vidovdan 1921, Serbian politicians rammed the so-called Vidovdan Constitution through the Yugoslav parliament. Nikola Pasic, then the grand old man of Serbian politics, exulted: 'This year's Vidovdan restored an empire to us.'
But this constitution was rejected by the Croats. For the next 20 years this Yugoslavia tottered from crisis to crisis, collapsing in blood in 1941.
As Ivo Banac, the Croatian historian, has pointed out: 'The restored empire was small and short-lived, like the terrestrial empire that, according to the Serbian folk epic, Prince Lazar abjured on the eve of the first Vidovdan in exchange for the celestial empire that is always and forever.'
Vidovdan 1948 was another date with destiny for the Serbs and all Yugoslavs. Stalin chose the day to expel Yugoslavia from the Soviet bloc, a turning point in world history.
Religion was, of course, discouraged in Communist Yugoslavia but every year Vidovdan candles were still lit by Lazar's tomb. In 1987, however, the church authorities took his sarcophagus on a pilgrimage around Serbian communities, a long march that ended on Vidovdan 1989.
On that day a million Serbs converged at Gazimestan, the site of the Battle of Kosovo, which had, of course, been fought exactly 600 years earlier. They waved Milosevic's picture alongside those of Lazar.
Milosevic, who arrived by helicopter, told the adoring masses: 'The Kosovo heroism does not allow us to forget that, at one time, we were brave and dignified and one of the few who went into battle undefeated... Six centuries later, again we are in battles and quarrels. They are not armed battles, though such things should not be excluded yet...'
In 2001 Milosevic's destiny and that of Serbia too, was again sealed on Vidovdan, as Milosevic boarded another helicopter, this time on his way to The Hague.
Zarko, I believe you when you say that as you sat around the cabinet table, no one mentioned the fact that when you chose this day to extradite Milosevic, it just happened to be Vidovdan. I just think no one mentioned it because no one needed to.
Tim Judah is the author of 'The Serbs: History, Myth and the Destruction of Yugoslavia', published by Yale University Press.
The Milosevic indictment
Full text of the indictment
Related special reports
Serbia
Kosovo
In pictures
Photo gallery: the Milosevic indictment The issue explained
War crimes tribunals
Related articles
29.06.2001: War criminals - the wanted list
29.06.2001: Milosevic flown out to face war crimes trial
29.06.2001: Huge aid promise prompted handover
29.06.2001: Ten years on, a warmonger's victims are still being counted
29.06.2001: Last act of revolution sends a message around the world
28.06.2001: Belgrade to give up Milosevic 'in days'
29.06.2001: Leader - indict other Serb bosses
Interactive guide
The massacres at Srebrenica
What do you think?
Debate the issue on Britain's best talkboards
Useful links
B-92 radio
The UN international criminal tribunal for the former Yugoslavia
Documents from the war crimes tribunal
War crimes tribunal watch
Stop Milosevic
Federal Republic of Yugoslavia