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There were disputed reports tonight that Serbian general Ratko Mladic, a top war crimes suspect, had been arrested.

Bosnian and Serbian media, including the Serbian state news agency Tanjug, reported that Gen Mladic, who is accused of war crimes and ethnic cleansing during the Bosnian war, has been detained.

But a spokesman for the Serbian government denied the arrest shortly afterwards.

Srdjan Djuric, a spokesman for Serbia’s Prime Minister, Vojislav Kostunica, described the reports as a "manipulation" of details and an attempt to derail the government’s efforts to detain Gen Mladic.

There were also contrary reports as to the location of the alleged arrest.

First reports said he had been tracked down in an area near the north-east Bosnian city of Tuzla, close to Bosnia’s mountainous border with Serbia.

But a later report said he was detained in Belgrade.

Tanjug quoted Bosnian Serb BN television as saying said Gen Mladic - one of the most wanted war crimes suspects still on the run after the 1992-1995 war - was "being transported" to the US-run air force base in Tuzla. Reuters also quoted local reports saying he was being taken to Tuzla, en route to the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague.

If Gen Mladic has indeed been detained, the place of his arrest could have great political ramifications. Serbian officials will be hoping he was not held within their borders, so as to avoid allegations he could have been arrested earlier.

Serbia had been under tremendous pressure from the EU and the US to capture the general.

Gen Mladic was indicted by the UN war crimes tribunal in 1995. He is accused of genocide over his troops’ massacre of 8,000 Muslim boys and men in Srebrenica and for the 1992-95 siege of the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo.

He was Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic’s army chief throughout the Bosnian war. With Mr. Karadzic, who is still a fugitive, Gen Mladic has come to symbolize the Serb campaign of ethnic cleansing of Croats and Muslims.

After the war, Gen Mladic lived freely in Belgrade for a period but disappeared when former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic was arrested in 2001 and taken to the Hague, where his trial over war crimes continues.