Welcoming the news, Munira Subasic said that this apprehension was also a kind of political trade-off.

The Muslim member of Bosnia and Herzegovina's three-man presidency, Bakir Izetbegovic, welcomed the news without reservation.

Izetbegovic voiced hope that Mladic's forthcoming trial before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) would help shed light on all facts and what had happened during and after the 1992-1995 war.

"It is important to highlight that the arrest was performed by Serbia's official services with the assistance of Bosnia's official institutions," said Izetbegovic without naming the Bosnian institutions that helped Serbia in that job.

This senior official of the Party of Democratic Action (SDA) said that the determination which Serbia had shown in apprehending Mladic created room for a new chapter in relations between Belgrade and Sarajevo.

The arrest of Mladic was cautiously commented on in the Bosnian Serb entity.

The entity's president Milorad Dodik said in a written statement that the arrest was an act of fulfilling the international obligations stemming from the Dayton peace agreement signed by Bosnia and its neighbours.

Dodik said that the authorities of the Bosnian Serb entity had never and would never stand behind anybody who committed war crimes, regardless of the perpetrators' ethnicity and religion. He expressed hope that Mladic would have a fair trial.

The Serb Democratic Party (SDS) leader, Mladen Bosic, said today's development was the continuation of Serbia's policy to extradite all its military and political leaders in order to show to the West that it was willing to meet its demands.

A representative of former Bosnian Serb prisoners of war, Branislav Dukic, expressed disappointment at Mladic's arrest.