Mladic can arrive in The Hague on Monday or Tuesday. Upon his arrival he will be immediately questioned by a judge, in compliance with international law, the ICTY judge Guney told the Anatolian news agency on Sunday.

After the Mladic arrest, the ICTY announced that it had assigned the trial chamber in charge of the Mladic case consisting of Judge Christoph Flugge of Germany as the chamber's chairman and Alphons Orie of the Netherlands and Bakone Justice Moloto of South Africa.

Guney believes that the trial could take 18 to 24 months.

Bruno Vekaric, the deputy Serbian war crimes prosecutor, was quoted by the New York Times on Sunday as saying that Mladic "was in relatively good health, aware of his surroundings, talkative and even emotional, tearing up when talking about his children."

"He understands everything, he speaks about everything," Vekaric said in an interview adding that his impression "is that there is no problem for a trial.”

According to Vekaric. Mladic’s family and lawyers "are exaggerating his health problems in order to delay extradition."

"Security services will discreetly transfer Mr. Mladic to The Hague, in order to avoid public demonstrations or violence," he added.

ICTY charged Mladic in 1995 for genocide and crimes against humanity because of his role in massacres committed in Srebrenica and during the siege of Sarajevo as well as for his responsibility for war crimes in northwestern Bosnia which Bosnian Serb forces committed in a drive to ethnically cleanse non-Serbs from areas they occupied.