UNFLINCHING defiance and an unerring instinct for staying put have characterised President Slobodan Milosevic's turbulent and often bloody 13 years in power. So it should come as no surprise that his refusal to accept electoral defeat and ignore the biggest protest ever against his rule led yesterday to pro-democracy demonstrators storming the parliament building in Belgrade.

The Serbian capital echoed with the sound of shots and stun grenades while black smoke and flames billowed from the parliament.

After dominating Balkan politics for over a decade and precipitating a series of bloody ethnic conflicts and unquantifiable human misery, Milosevic's iron grip on power appears finally to be slipping.

The 59-year-old was born in Pozarevac, an industrial city in central Serbia. His father, a theologist, and his mother, a teacher, both committed suicide in his youth.

After graduating from Belgrade law school in 1964, Milosevic joined the Communist Party, the traditional avenue to power in communist Yugoslavia.

He moved up the career ladder, holding various business positions until 1983 when he was appointed director of Beobanka, one of the major state-run banks.

After orchestrating a 1987 putsch against Serbian Communist Party leader Ivan Stambolic, Milosevic used his political power base to expand his influence. Stambolic was abducted in Belgrade a month ago and has not been seen since.

Exploiting Serb nationalism when Yugoslavia's gradual disintegration began, Milosevic became Serbia's president in 1989 by advocating the Serbian supremacy that would fuel wars in Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and ultimately in Kosovo.

He exploited legal loopholes to remain in power. Prevented by the constitution from another term as president, Milosevic simply switched offices, becoming the president of Yugoslavia - which includes Serbia and Montenegro - in 1997 and endowing that previously toothless position with unlimited authority.

When his term in office was about to expire, he changed the constitution to have Yugoslav presidents elected by popular vote for up to two four-year terms.

Milosevic was brutal in putting down early challenges, calling out Yugoslav army tanks in 1991 to disperse opposition demonstrations. Later, as international pressure intensified, he thrived on the opposition's disarray, weathering months of demonstrations in 1996 and 1997 to emerge as strong as ever.

In all the conflicts, his message has been the same: the world is united against Serbia and Serbs must resist. That message wore thinner as economic distress, caused by international sanctions and economic mismanagement, grew in Yugoslavia and Serbia, the larger of Yugoslavia's two remaining republics.

If the splintered opposition had united in a joint bloc against him, Milosevic, now supported by only about a quarter of Serbs, would have been out a long time ago. But last year's Nato war against Yugoslavia over Kosovo strengthened his hand again as Serbs took it as the ultimate evidence of the world's conspiracy against them.

Almost totally isolated at home and abroad, Milosevic's closest counsel is his hard-line wife, Mira Markovic, 58, whose withering diatribes against the West set the tone for the presidential election.

They have two troublesome children - daughter Marija, 35, who runs a radio and television station, and son Marko, 26, a disco owner and race car enthusiast with rumoured business ties with the underworld.

A family despised but one that has been difficult to challenge until now, thanks in part to opposition leader Vojislav Kostunica. Nothing in Kostunica's demeanour reflects the daunting task he has undertaken: to defeat one of the world's last autocratic leaders and halt more than a decade of national decline.

Yet Kostunica has done what seemed impossible - rekindle hope. An unlikely presidential candidate in the turbulent Balkans, where charismatic leaders are idolised, the down-to-earth Kostunica's attraction is hard to define.

A former law professor, he is low-key and unassuming. His honesty is probably what warmed the hearts of average citizens outraged by endemic corruption and the regime's record of bloodshed and wars. The no-frills Kostunica, 56, pursued an academic career until he was kicked out of Belgrade Law School in 1974 for his anti-communist stance.

Active in Serbia's fledgling opposition movement in early 1990s, Kostunica founded his own Democratic Party of Serbia in 1992 and has led it since.

He lives with wife Zorica, a fellow law school graduate, and two cats and a dog in a middle-class Belgrade apartment.

When Milosevic called general elections this summer, an alliance of 18 opposition parties - the Democratic Opposition of Serbia - picked Kostunica to run against the president. Kostunica's personal and political consistency and his Serb patriotism endear him to the man on the street. In a country where Nato bombings last year are still fresh in people's minds, Kostunica has been careful to keep a distance from the West, while cautioning that this nation must "make its peace with Europe and the world".

O N Kosovo, he has promised to do his best to stand by the province's Serb minority and work for the return of many of the 200,000 who left out of fear of the Albanian majority.

So what will the future hold for the man branded "Europe's worst demagogue" by US President Bill Clinton?

Milosevic's horizons are limited. In June last year, the US State Department offered a £3.1m reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of specified indicted war criminals, including Milosevic. President Clinton is also reported to have authorised the CIA to cripple Milosevic financially by electronically syphoning funds from his overseas bank accounts.

More significantly in May last year Milosevic was indicted for crimes against humanity including murder, deportation, persecution and the violation of the laws and customs of war. The move, announced by the UN War Crimes Tribunal Chief Prosecutor Louise Arbour, was the first such indictment of a head of state while still in office. It was based on evidence of the deportation of 740,000 ethnic Albanians from Kosovo and the murder of 340 "identified" victims.

The West would dearly love to see Milosevic handed over for trial. But the prospects for an arrest and trial, let alone conviction, are far from certain.

Detaining Milosevic will not be easy. He is unlikely to risk venturing far, if at all, from Serbia - the indictment obliges every UN member state to seize Milosevic should they find him on their territory. If he does choose to flee it would have to be to a friendly state, possibly Russia.

Any new regime in Belgrade is unlikely to hand him over, a move which could spark a furious and potentially destabilising backlash from his supporters within the country. His surrender might be regarded by the new regime as a dangerous precedent - with many in the Serb administration, police and army fearful that they too could face indictment.

Despite being indicted by the Tribunal in connection with war crimes in Bosnia, neither the Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic nor his trusted lieutenant General Ratko Mladic have been arrested. Both have retained their liberty despite the presence of thousands of Nato troops in Bosnia.

There are no Nato forces in Serbia, of course, and any operation to snatch Milosevic from Serbia would be physically perilous as well as legally and diplomatically contentious.

Whatever the final outcome, the prospects of him being brought to justice are not encouraging.