General Ratko Mladic is considered to have led Radovan Karadzic's Bosnian Serb forces to commit the atrocities and massacres which characterised the Bosnian war.

But it is the 1995 attack on Srebrenica, towards the end of the three years of bloodshed, with which the commander is chiefly associated. The massacre - in which at least 8,000 Muslim men and boys perished - was the worst atrocity in Europe since the Second World War.

General Mladic, 64, was indicted by the UN war crimes tribunal in 1995 on charges of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. He has been on the run ever since, with Serbian security agents repeatedly denying suggestions that they know of his whereabouts.

General Mladic was born in the Bosnian village of Kalinovik in 1942, growing up in Yugoslavia under Marshal Tito to become a regular officer in the Yugloslav People's Army. When the country began to fragment in 1991, he was posted to lead the army's 9th Corps against Croatian troops at Knin.

Feared and idolised in equal measure, as the fighting intensified he took command of the Army's Second Military District, based in the capital Sarajevo. He was voted commander of the Bosnian Serb Army following its creation by the Bosnian Serb Assembly in May 1992 .

As Commander, General Mladic oversaw in Sarajevo the longest siege in the history of modern warfare, which lasted from April 5, 1992 to February 29, 1996. An estimated 12,000 people were killed in daily waves of shelling, sniper attacks and kidnaps.

Bosnian Serb forces began to attack the declared safe area of Srebrenica in early 1995, where tens of thousands of civilians had taken refuge from earlier Serb offensives in north-eastern Bosnia. The Serbian forces bombarded the town with artillery and rocket fire for five days before entering, accompanied by camera crews.

The next day, buses rolled in to take the women and children to Muslim territory. Men and boys aged from 12 to 77 were separated out of the crowd for interrogation. Despite promising that they were be kept safe, within five days, at least 7,500 had been systematically murdered.

At the end of the Bosnian war, General Mladic returned to Belgrade, where he enjoyed the protection of former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic. Living openly in the city, he was frequently pictured eating in expensive restaurants and even attending football matches, until Mr Milosevic's arrest in 2001.

With the chief source of his support undermined, he vanished. Although Serbs repeatedly denied knowledge of his whereabouts, it is widely thought that he returned to his wartime bunker in Han Pijesak, not far from Sarajevo, where he lived under the protection of other nationalist hardliners by whom he is still regarded as a hero-soldier.

As Serbia moved towards membership of the European Union, leaders were put under increasing pressure to hand General Mladic over as a fundamental condition of entry. Belgrade is desperate to avoid suspension of Stabilisation and Association pact talks - the first step to membership - began last year.

Commentators have noted how reports of General Mladic's imminent handover tend to intensify each time Serbia faces a Western deadline for action. On Tuesday, the daily Blic quoted former state security chief Goran Petrovic as saying the state was giving him ten more days to surrender.