The arrest of Slobodan Milosevic has exposed deep divisions within the new democratic administration in Belgrade, with the Yugoslav President, Mr Vojislav Kostunica, at odds with the Serbian government of the Prime Minister, Mr Zoran Djindjic.
Constitutionally, it is the government which is in charge of investigating, arresting and prosecuting Mr Milosevic for his alleged offences at home, while Mr Kostunica is responsible for foreign policy and for any decision to transfer the former Yugoslav president to the Hague tribunal.
The arrest marked the end of an agonising two days for Mr Kostunica. He has been increasingly exasperating Mr Djindjic and his colleagues, who are in a hurry to start rebuilding Serbia and integrating it with Europe.
In this quest Mr Kostunica, an ardent Serbian nationalist, is seen increasingly as a liability, although he enjoys immense popularity at home.
All the signs are that Mr Kostunica was kept in the dark about Friday night's moves to raid the Milosevic fortress. For most of Friday the President was absent in Geneva.
Mr Djindjic, meanwhile, affected nonchalance, declaring that the action was routine police work, while he was at home watching a video.
The initial bungling of the seizure was in no small measure due to the conflicting loyalties exhibited by the Serbian commandos, who were ordered to go into the villa, and the Yugoslav army units guarding it.
As Yugoslav President, Mr Kostunica is the commander-in-chief of the armed forces, and it was only later that the army stood aside on his orders.
When police tried to raid the villa in the early hours of Saturday, the army guards reportedly handed the keys to the gates to Mr Milosevic's private body guards.
The front page of Saturday morning's Politika newspaper, reflecting the Djindjic camp's views, accused the army chiefof-staff, Gen Nebojsa Pavkovic, of sabotaging the arrest, and suggested that he was operating at the behest of Mr Kostunica.
Senior Djindjic officials charged that Gen Pavkovic had attempted a "mini-military coup".
A similar, if more minor, conflict erupted in Belgrade a week ago when the Djindjic camp quietly arrested the former mayor of the Bosnian town of Prijedor and put him on an aircraft to The Hague, where he is on a secret list of accused war criminals. It was the first time that Belgrade had arrested and transferred an indicted person to The Hague.
Again, Mr Kostunica was kept in the dark.
While Mr Milosevic is in jail, the conflict between the rival camps is likely to intensify, with the Djindjic group feeling emboldened to rid the army and security forces of remaining Milosevic loyalists.
The Americans were hugely instrumental in ushering Mr Kostunica into office last October as the best hope for displacing Mr Milosevic while retaining domestic support. But Washington could now transfer its backing to Mr Djindjic as a pragmatic liberal who acted more decisively to put the ousted leader in Belgrade's central prison.