Mladic footage aired on Bosnian TV

Home video footage of the wanted Serbian war criminal Ratko Mladic, some of which may have been filmed as recently as last year, has been shown on Bosnian TV. The broadcast has caused embarrassment to Serbia, which is supposed to deliver the former Bosnian Serb general to the Hague war crimes tribunal in return for eventual EU membership.

60 Minutes, a programme on Bosnia's Federation TV, said that part of the footage showed Mladic - who is wanted in connection with the 1995 Srebrenica massacre in which around 7,000 Bosnian Muslims were killed - enjoying a skiing holiday last winter.

In the video, Mladic stands with two women, one of whom throws a snowball at the 67-year-old.

In other footage, Mladic says "This is like paradise" as he sits outside a Serbian army barracks drinking coffee with his wife. The videos are believed to have been filmed in and around Belgrade, except for his visit to a wedding in 2000 which is thought to have been at a restaurant just outside the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo.

Serbia's pro-Western government, which is currently in membership negotiations with the European Union, reacted angrily to the suggestion that Mladic is living freely in and around Belgrade, saying it is "science-fiction". The EU has said Serbia cannot be a member until Mladic is delivered to the Hague.

Dusan Ignjatovic, director of Serbia's Office for Cooperation with the Hague, said the footage was probably seized during searches in his country and had already been forwarded to the Hague.

He told the Times of London: "The majority of that footage was compiled - it can clearly be seen - during the 90s and the early 2000s, either 2001 or 2002. I don't know exactly when. As regards the clips purportedly filmed in 2008... right now we cannot say exactly whether they were or not, but we don't believe they were shot in 2008."

The videos are currently being analysed, but so far the most recent solid date identifier is the presence in one family scene of General Momcilo Perisic, a former Yugoslav Army chief, who surrendered to The Hague in March 2005.

Bosnian officials have always insisted that Serbia knows exactly where Mladic is hiding.

The new video footage comes after this week's revelations from Branislav Puhalo, Mladic's former security chief, that the fugitive moved freely around Belgrade between 1997-2002, protected from bounty hunters by 50 soldiers assigned by former president Slobodan Milosevic.

He told the Belgrade District Court at a trial on Tuesday of 10 people charged with aiding and abetting Mladic: "We went to soccer matches, to the police headquarters, to restaurants."