By Aleksandar Vasovic
BELGRADE (Reuters) - Serbian police disarmed a man with two hand grenades who had threatened to blow himself up at the entrance to the office of Serbian President Boris Tadic, a senior police source said on Thursday.
The man, Dragan Maric, 57, became trapped in a three-metre square sealed-off area between two entrance doors, one of them armoured. A lengthy stand-off with police followed.
"He's arrested. It's over," the senior police source told Reuters. "The bomb has been safely taken away from him after five hours of negotiations."
The police took away a grenade which had the safety pin pulled out, after seizing the other grenade earlier.
Tadic played host to U.S. Vice-President Joe Biden at the same building on Wednesday. Biden left Belgrade earlier on Thursday for Kosovo.
Maric had given multiple warnings that he would carry out an attack.
"The man came to the entrance normally used by journalists and citizens who come to visit the building," said the president's press aide Jasmina Stojanov.
Maric gave the government a 1400 GMT deadline to respond to his request for an "out-of-court settlement" to what media said was a property dispute. The deadline passed without incident as police negotiators tried to persuade Maric to give himself up.
In a letter to Tadic, Maric said he had no intention of hurting anyone and that "death is better than the tyranny of the regime." He said the government had seized $1.2 million in cash, an emerald, securities, computers and documents from him.
Tadic said in a statement: "Whatever the problems, they cannot be resolved through force and endangering of lives."
"It is too early to analyse, but the problem is that the man told the police in advance he would do it and no one did anything to stop him," military analyst Aleksandar Radic said.
"This was obviously not an assassination attempt," security analyst Zoran Dragisic said. "This was a desperate man who had no support of any organisation, unlike the assassination of Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic."
Assassinated in March 2003 in central Belgrade, Djindjic was a pro-Western politician who had led the ouster of autocrat Slobodan Milosevic in 2000.
(Writing by Gordana Filipovic; Editing by Robert Woodward)