The Hague - Serb general Ratko Mladic, facing genocide proceedings at the United nations war crimes tribunal, has been hospitalised for surgery, Serbian media said on Thursday.
According to the daily Blic and other sources, Mladic has been slated for a hernia surgery in a Hague hospital.
The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) refused to comment on the reports, citing confidentiality of medical records.
Serbia arrested Mladic, 68, in late May and extradited him to ICTY to face trial a decade and a half after he was indicted for crimes such as the Srebrenica massacre of 8 000 Muslims and other crimes in the 1992-95 Bosnian war.
He was ruled fit to stand trial despite claiming, on his first appearance in the courtroom on July 3, that he was a “very ill man.” He refused to enter a plea when he again entered the courtroom a month later and was due to appear in court again on August 25.
On Wednesday, ICTY prosecution asked that Mladic first be tried under genocide charges, then for other war crimes.
With much evidence for Srebrenica already at hand from trials of Mladic's subordinates already convicted for their role in Srebrenica, a separate trial could begin and end relatively swiftly.
ICTY had held the former Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic in detention nearly four years and on trial longer than three years but was still without a verdict when he died of a heart attack in March 2006. - Sapa-dpa