Pizzas galore!

"Ratko Mladic is in Serbia. There is no doubt about this - he has been there since 1998," she said. "During all this time he has been and remains within reach of the Serbian authorities."

At the end of the Balkan conflict, the Hague tribunal's No 1 suspect was the former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, who was finally handed over in 2001 to be charged with genocide and other war crimes. Since that time, however, prosecutors have struggled to make any charges stick and Mr Milosevic has yet to complete the presentation of his defence.

But if General Mladic were brought before the court, the chains of command that prosecutors would need to demonstrate are that much clearer - most notably over the Srebrenica massacre, where television news cameras recorded the general as he arrived in the enclave to direct an operation which led to the slaughter of more than 7,000 Muslim men and boys.

The handover of the general would also bolster's Serbia's position on the long-term status of Kosovo province, which is still under UN adminstration.

FROM SOLDIER TO CRIMINAL

Born in Bozinovici, Bosnia, in 1943, the son of Communist partisans

Trained at the military academy of the Yugoslav People’s Army, Belgrade

Posted to Knin in June 1991 to lead the Army’s 9th Corps during fighting with Croatian forces

In 1992, commanded the Yugoslav Army's Second Military District in Sarajevo

Appointed commander of Bosnian Serb Army in 1992

Led the Serb onslaught against Srebrenica in 1995

First indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in June 1995, accused of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes

Subsequent indictments relate to the slaughter of at least 7,000 Bosnian Muslims in Srebrenica from July 13 to July 19 1995