1406 GMT: French President Nicolas Sarkozy has hailed the arrest of former Bosnian Serb military chief Ratko Mladic as "a step towards Serbia joining the European Union."
"This is very good news, it's very big news. This is ... another step towards Serbia joining, one day soon, the European Union," Sarkozy said, on the sidelines of a summit of the Group of Eight most industrialised democracies in Deauville, France.
1400 GMT: Serbia's deputy war crimes prosecutor Bruno Vekaric says that it could take up to seven days to complete the procedure to extradite Ratko Mladic to the UN court in The Hague, my colleagues report from Belgrade.
-- Serbia on Thursday announced the arrest of former Bosnian Serb military chief Ratko Mladic, ending a 16-year manhunt for the general accused of masterminding the Srebrenica massacre, Europe's worst since World War II.
President Boris Tadic confirmed reports that the 69-year-old had been detained by Serbian security forces, saying the capture would bolster Serbia's "moral credibility in the world".
"Today, early in the morning, we arrested Ratko Mladic," the president told a press conference in Belgrade.
"The extradition process is underway," he added, referring to the process to transfer Mladic to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), a UN tribunal based in The Hague.
Mladic, the most wanted fugitive from the ICTY, faces charges of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes for his role in the Srebrenica massacre and the bloody siege of Sarajevo during the 1992-95 conflict.
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