The BBC is reporting that Bosnia's Federation TV has broadcast what it claims are videos of former Bosnian Serb army chief, Ratko Mladic, filmed over the past 10 years.

The military leader is wanted over the three-year siege of Sarajevo in the mid-1990s and the slaughter of 7000 Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica in 1995.

One shot in the video allegedly showed Mladic standing with two unidentified women during the winter of 2008. Another segment showed a slimmed down Mladic appearing celebrating with friends.

Mladic, who would now be 67 years old, is wanted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia on war crimes charges in connection with the Bosnian civil war. The arrest of Radovan Karadic last summer had made some people hopeful that Mladic's arrest would be imminent but this did not prove to be the case.

But Serbian officials have cast doubt on the reported age of the footage.

"Right now, I cannot say exactly where the images are from," Dusan Ignjatovic, the director of Serbia's National Council for Co-operation with the ICTY (war-crimes tribunal), told Serbia's B92 TV.

"Regarding the video estimated to have been filmed in 2008 or even this winter, at this moment we cannot say if it's true or not, but we believe that this is not a video from 2008," he added.

EU Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn also said he believed the footage was not recent, telling reporters in Brussels that it was "certainly not after spring 2008 when the new (Serbian) government was formed".

A Serbian minister also said it was "simply impossible" there was video from 2008.

"The material that was shown last night was seized in Mladic's house in December 2008 and handed to the Hague Tribunal in March this year," said Rasim Ljajic, the chairman of the Serbian National Council for Co-operation with the ICTY. "Not a single shot is less than eight years old."

Previous reports on Mladic had indicated that the general was in poor health following a series of strokes.