The Belgrade-based war crimes court stopped questioning war crimes suspect Ratko Mladic today because of his poor health, his lawyer said.
"The investigative judge had tried (to interview Mladic) and had to end questioning as Mladic is in serious condition. He is hardly responsive," lawyer Milos Saljic told reporters.
Bruno Vekaric, the deputy war crimes prosecutor, told reporters the court would continue to question Mladic tomorrow.
Mladic was arrested in northeastern Serbia where he was hiding in a farmhouse owned by a relative.
He is sought by a UN war crimes court to face charges of genocide and war crimes during the 1992-1995 Bosnian war.
He was taken to Belgrade's Special War Crimes Court to face proceedings to extradite him to the UN tribunal in The Hague, which could take seven working days, Vekaric said earlier.
An official familiar with today's hearing said Mladic appeared disoriented and tired.
"One of his hands is almost paralysed, perhaps due to an earlier stroke. He was examined by a doctor and his lawyer brought him pills," the official said on condition of anonymity.
Rasim Ljajic, a government minister in charge of the arrest of war crimes fugitives, said that when he was arrested, Mladic was armed with two handguns which he did not use.
Mladic was arrested in Serbia today after 15 years on the run from international genocide charges, opening the way for the once-pariah state to approach the European mainstream.
Mladic, accused of orchestrating the massacre of 8,000 Muslim men and boys in the town of Srebrenica and a brutal 43-month siege of Sarajevo during Bosnia's 1992-5 war, was found in a farmhouse owned by a cousin, a police official said.
"Mladic was handcuffed and whisked away," said the official, who added that he had been cooperative. The once burly and widely feared general was not disguised but had false identity papers and looked haggard and much older, he said.
"Hardly anyone could recognise him."
"On behalf of the Republic of Serbia I can announce the arrest of Ratko Mladic. The extradition process is under way," Serbian president Boris Tadic told reporters in Belgrade just hours before a visit by a top official of the European Union, which told Serbia it must arrest Mladic before it could join.
"This step is a testimony that Serbia is a state which has firmly established rule of law," he said later at a joint news conference with EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton.
Mr Tadic confirmed Mladic (69) had been detained in Serbia, which had long said it could not find a man who is still seen as a hero by many Serbs and whose Bosnian Serb Army was armed and funded by the late Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic, who died in 2006 while on trial for war crimes.
"This removes a heavy burden from Serbia and closes a page of our unfortunate history," Mr Tadic said.
Shortly afterwards, Ms Ashton arrived in Belgrade and congratulated Mr Tadic on the arrest.
"I have a great privilege to be here today...this is an important day for Serbia and for those who are still grieving for their loved ones," Ashton said.
Mr Tadic said the arrest will "reinvigorate the process of (EU) integration" stalled over the slow pace of reforms.
"Serbia must be ambitious, its institutions must be ambitious...we need a date for the accession talks," he said.
Mladic was arrested in the village of Lazarevo, near the northeastern town of Zrenjanin around 100km from the capital Belgrade in the early hours, the police official said.
Many nationalists in Serbia, which was under international sanctions over the war in Bosnia and then bombed by NATO to stop atrocities in Kosovo in 1999, idolise Mladic and one representative made clear their fury with the government.
"This shameful arrest of a Serb general is a blow to our national interests and the state," Boris Aleksic, a spokesman for the ultranationalist Serbian Radical Party said. "This is a regime of liars -- dirty, corrupt and treacherous."
Several dozen nationalists and soccer hooligans rallied in downtown Belgrade to protest Mladic's arrest, clashing briefly with police who dispersed them from the main square, a Reuters reporter said.
Dozens of people were arrested and injured in 2008 throughout Serbia in riots following the arrest of Bosnian Serb wartime political leader Radovan Karadzic.
Mr Tadic said he would not allow a repeat of such violence.
"This country will remain stable," he said. "Whoever tries to destabilise it will be prosecuted and punished."
Washington and other capitals hailed the arrest.
"The European prospects of Serbia are now brighter than ever," said Swedish foreign minister Carl Bildt.
"Serbia is a country that has suffered a lot but the fact it has delivered presumed war criminals is very good news. It's one more step towards Serbia's integration one day into the European Union," French president Nicolas Sarkozy said at a Group of Eight summit in France.
Serbia's dinar currency rose more than one per cent on the news, which Mr Tadic said opened the way for reconciliation in the Balkans region, still recovering from the conflicts that tore apart old federal Yugoslavia in the 1990s.
Nato secretary-general Anders Fogh Rasmussen said Mladic played a central role in some of the darkest episodes of Balkan and European history and called his arrest "an important step towards a Europe that is whole, free and at peace".
Although his arrest removed a diplomatic thorn from Belgrade's side, the revelation that Mladic was in Serbia, as many suspected, raises questions as to how he eluded justice for so long.
Reuters