Top Bosnian official slams arrest of former leader

˝Just when we tried to improve ties with Belgrade... then Belgrade makes such a move that worsens relations to a great extent,˝ Komsic said.

SARAJEVO, March 2, 2010 (AFP) - A top official condemned the arrest in London of a former member of Bosnia's wartime presidency Ejup Ganic for alleged war crimes committed during the 1990s war, SRNA news agency reported Tuesday.

Ganic's arrest, at Belgrade's request, represented "Serbia's aggressive relations towards Bosnia-Hercegovina," the Bosnian Serb SRNA agency quoted the Croat chairman of Bosnia's tripartite presidency Zeljko Komsic as saying.

"Just when we tried to improve ties with Belgrade... then Belgrade makes such a move that worsens relations to a great extent," Komsic said.

Ganic was detained on Monday at London's Heathrow airport by Scotland Yard's Extradition Unit officers over the killing of injured soldiers in 1992.

According to a provisional extradition request from Serbia Ganic and 17 others are suspected of involvement in an attack on a Yugoslav army convoy in Sarajevo at the start of Bosnia's war in May 1992. Initially Ganic was indicted with 18 other people but one suspect died in the mean time.

Sources close to the investigation in Serbia told AFP that eighteen soldiers and officers of the Yugoslav army were killed and 22 wounded in the attack in breach of the Geneva conventions. Other Serbian sources spoke of a total of 41 casualties.

Ganic -- a Muslim member of Bosnia's presidency during the 1992-1995 war and the former president of the Muslim-Croat Federation of Bosnia and Hercegovina -- has been remanded in custody is due to appear in court again on March 29.

Serbia must now provide full papers to support its extradition request before a date can be fixed for a hearing, the Foreign Office spokesman said. A judge will then consider whether there are any bars to the extradition.

Bosnia's inter-ethnic war between its Croats, Muslims and Serbs claimed some 100,000 lives. During the conflict Belgrade politically and militarily backed ethnic Serbs.