1027 GMT: Some background on Mladic's first appearance in the war crimes court in The Hague today -- Mladic's lawyer Milos Saljic had said Thursday that his client was treated for cancer two years ago while evading genocide charges.
The ex-general had also suffered three strokes and two heart attacks, the lawyer said.
Mladic's full trial is not expected to start for months, and should last several years.
1018 GMT: Bosnian Serbs have reacted with anger at seeing their former army chief Ratko Mladic appear before the UN court in The Hague, looking frail and complaining of ill health, my colleagues report from Banja Luka, the capital of the Serb-run Repulika Srpska.
"My heart breaks when I see him so old and obviously in ailing health. We should not have let this happen", Jovana Ciric, 44, waitress in a bar there says.
"I am so angry that (Mladic) had ended up in The Hague that I would rather want him to die than to get sentenced ... If he dies without a conviction, that will be our victory," says a visibly upset 55-year-old Boris, who did not give his last name, watching in a cafe.
"If there was any justice he would not even stand trial because he is so old," Bozidar, a 49-year-old technician, who also did not want to give his last name, told AFP.
1005 GMT: "I defended my people and my country, not Ratko Mladic," Mladic tells the tribunal in The Hague.
"I did not kill Croats as Croats, I was just defending my country."
0948 GMT: Widows and mothers of victims of the 1995 Srebrenica massacre of some 8,000 Muslim men and boys -- which forms the crux of the genocide charges -- are following proceedings in The Hague live on television in Bosnia.
"I hope God makes him burn in hell," hissed one woman, seated among the gravestones of victims buried at the Potocari memorial centre, my colleagues report from Srebrenica.
"If only we could judge him here. I would like them to bring him here and we would tear him alive into little pieces," added Hanifa Djogaz, glaring at the footage.
0939 GMT: Mladic insists to the war crimes court that he was "just defending my country".
0924 GMT: "I would like to read and receive these obnoxious charges against me. I want to read it with my lawyers," Mladic says on his first appearance before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.
"I need more than a month for these monstrous words that I have never heard of," the ex-general said of the claims, telling a judge he would delay entering a plea.
Judge Alphons Orie, a Dutch national, has set July 4 as the date for Mladic's next appearance, by when he will be required to enter pleas on the 11 charges against him.
Failing to do so, an automatic not-guilty plea will be entered on his behalf.
0916 GMT: More on Mladic's next appearance before the UN court -- the wartime Bosnian Serb army chief will appear again on July 4, when he will be required to enter a plea to genocide and war crimes charges, the judge says.
0910 GMT: Mladic refuses to enter a plea to genocide and war crimes charges in The Hague, denouncing the allegations against him as "obnoxious".
0907 GMT: Mladic's next court appearance will be on July 4, the presiding judge tells the court.
0905 GMT: Mladic has denounced the "obnoxious" charges against him, my colleagues report from The Hague.
0900 GMT: Wartime Bosnian Serb army chief Ratko Mladic says he is a "gravely ill man" as he makes his first appearance before a UN court in The Hague after 16 years on the run from genocide charges.
"I am a gravely ill man," the man dubbed the "Butcher of Bosnia" told judge Alphons Orie of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.
"I was in such a poor state," he added, describing his arrival at the tribunal's detention unit in The Hague on Tuesday.
The 69-year-old is accused of masterminding the Srebrenica massacre of 8,000 Muslim men and boys -- Europe's worst mass killing since World War II -- and the 44-month siege of the capital Sarajevo from May 1992 in which 10,000 died.
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