During the Bosnian war, Voji slav Seselj was the leader of Serbia's Chetniks, who carried out some of the most appalling acts of "ethnic cleansing" involving the butchering of non-Serb civilians in Bosnia. He was also leader of the Serbian Radical Party.
In 1996, I saw him speak at an election rally on a street in the town of Srbac in the north of Republika Srpska, the Serbian entity in Bosnia. His speech was blood-curdling stuff, referring approvingly to the sending of Muslims out of Bosnia in body bags and driving them into the Adriatic.
Now his party has been in the government of Serbia for over two months. And it was his young Minister for Information, Mr Aleksander Vucic, who came to Pristina yesterday to reassure Kosovo's ethnic Albanians that their rights would be respected and to reassure the international media that Serbia wanted talks with Albanian leaders.
Some 40 journalists and seven television crews crammed around the large oak conference table in the main municipal building to hear what 27-year-old Mr Vucic had to say.
The tallest and neatest man in the room, Mr Vucic sat under the crest of the old communist Yugoslavia in front of two flags of the present, rather smaller, Yugoslavia. He wore a smartly cut blue blazer with silver buttons, grey trousers, light blue shirt and navy and gold striped tie. His neatly-cut hair was gelled back showing his healthy clean-shaven complexion to best advantage.
His opening remarks barely genuflected towards his official responsibility to all the people of Kosovo, 90 per cent of whom are ethnic Albanians. "I have noted that people are very much worried, particularly among Serbian citizens because of the very frequent terrorist attacks," he began. He pledged that the State "will provide security for all individuals, whatever their nationality".
His message to the Albanian people was that "every problem should be resolved peacefully and through dialogue. Unfortunately our experience up to now was that they [Albanian political representatives] did not want to participate in dialogue."
The government of which Mr Vucic is a member has sovereignty over the province of Kosovo, and is resisting majority Albanian demands for independence or some form of autonomy.
He spoke of the Albanian side as if the independence-seeking guerrillas of the Kosovo Liberation Army and the moderate leader Mr Ibrahim Rugova were part of a seamless unit. KLA attacks, such as that on Wednesday that killed another Serbian policeman, were further proof that the Albanian political leadership was not interested in dialogue, he said.
A questioner who asks what will be done to win trust from the 90 per cent Albanian majority in Kosovo was told by Mr Vucic that the Albanians represent just 16 per cent of the population of Serbia. He referred to them as the "national minority" throughout.
The same questioner told him that the previous day she had visited Albanian houses that had had petrol thrown about them before being set alight. She had met Albanian children who now had nightmares about Serbian tanks since the security forces came to their area. One child could not speak because of fear, she said.
Mr Vucic said it was "interesting" that she had met such children. "It was strange that you did not make contact with Serbian children who also are afraid if they want to cross Kosovo by road." However, if she really had met such children, perhaps she would give him the address and he would "check it out" himself.
Generally he spoke in short clauses to allow the interpreter translate into English. But occasionally, when a question got him going as this one did, he galloped ahead, leaving the interpreter floundering.
On several occasions he intervened to correct the interpreter's English. But invited by a BBC reporter to give an answer in English he said: "We are in Serbia and so I will speak Serbian." He said he would give a short interview in English afterwards. Nobody asked a question in Albanian, the first language of 90 per cent of Mr Vucic's subjects here.
He assured us the rights of "the Albanian national minority" would be protected "up to the highest standards of international agreements". He had gone on radio to assure Albanian people of this, he said. Responding to the recommendation of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees that refugees in Albania should not return to Kosovo yet, he said they should indeed return, and that the Serbian government would help repair their houses and provide them with food and other necessities. "The Albanian political leaders should tell their people that the government is ready to help them."
He seemed delighted with a question asking if he was aware that the KLA rebels now controlled the main road and rail links from Kosovo's capital Pristina to the town of Pec. "I'm pleased that you noticed that. That is the justification for the presence of the government's forces in this territory."
He galloped ahead of the interpreter again in response to a question suggesting Serbian police were refusing to come to Kosovo and that soldiers here were deserting in fear of KLA attacks. "I have only heard about this in the western media," he said. "I can guarantee that every policeman and government official knows their job and is doing it responsibly. This is just part of a propaganda war."
Interestingly, he appeared to confirm the rumour circulating in Pristina all week that a delegation of mothers of Serbian police from outside the area is planning to come here to protest in the town and demand that their sons be allowed return home.
"Every mother is worried for her own child," he replied. "Even my mother was worried because I was coming to Kosovo."
For an hour he answered questions, mostly hostile, from the international media and a couple of soft ones from Serbian reporters. He noted that the western media were very "politically coloured". Then Mr Vucic went back to Belgrade.