BELGRADE, Serbia - General Ratko Mladic, the brutal Bosnian Serb general suspected of leading the bloody massacre of 8,000 Muslim men and boys, was arrested in an early morning raid on Thursday in Serbia after more than a decade on the run from genocide charges, the country's president said.

The arrest 16 years after Mladic was indicted by the UN war crimes tribunal could be a jolt for Serbia's lagging efforts to join the European Union. The country has been under intense pressure from the international community to catch Europe's most wanted war crimes suspect and the EU has insisted on his arrest as a condition for its membership bid.

UN prosecutors have said they believed the suspect in the worst massacre in Europe since World War II was hiding in Serbia under the protection of hardliners who consider him a hero for his role in Bosnia's 1992-1995 ethnic war.