Former Bosnian Serb military leader Ratko Mladic may be sent to The Hague and face face genocide charges in the International Criminal Tribunal within the next 24 hours, reports say.

As soon as the appeal against the war criminal arrives to the court, which is expected to happen Tuesday, he will be extradited, an anonymous Serbian justice official has said, according to the Bulgarian Dnevnik daily.

On Monday, it was made clear that, the Prosecutor's Office of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia is considering merging the trials against Mladic and ex-president of Republika Srpska Radovan Karadzic.

Ratko Mladic, accused of orchestrating the Siege of Sarajevo and the Srebrenica massacre, in which some 8 000 Muslims were killed, was arrested on May 26 in a village close to the northern Serbian town of Zrenjanin, after 16 years on the run.

The arrest incited mass rallies in his support in Serbia. Amid violent clashes with police forces, the protesters insisted that Serbia should not hand him over to the U.N court in The Hague.