Belgrade - The Serbian general public reacted Tuesday with shock and disbelief to the news that Bosnian Serb wartime leader and war crimes suspect Radovan Karadzic has been arrested.

"I can't believe it. I though he was dead or that he will die hiding," said 30-year-old Maja who didn't want to give her last name. "I'm so shocked."

Serbia authorities on Monday night said they arrested Radovan Karadzic, one of the top two Balkan war crimes suspects.

Karadzic's lawyer Svetozar Vujacic told Beta news agency that Karadzic was arrested on Friday night in the capital Belgrade and was held "in some room" until Monday with "a hat on his head" so he couldn't see who arrested him.

Washington - Former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic's arrest shows that Serbia is committed to bringing war-crimes suspects to justice, the White House said Monday.

Karadzic played a role in "a brutal campaign of ethnic cleansing" against non-Serbs and the mass murder of thousands of Bosnian Muslim and Bosnian Croat civilians, White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said.

The United States has pressured Serbia for years to arrest Karadzic and turn him over to the International Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague, and at times has withheld financial aid from Serbia.

Belgrade - Serbia's parliament Monday suspended for two weeks debate on a pre-membership treaty with the European Union after days of filibustering by the hardline nationalist opposition.

Parliament speaker Slavica Djukic Dejanovic called for the pause in hopes that Serbia's governing pro-Western coalition and the opposition can negotiate an end to the impasse over the Stabilization and Association Agreement (SAA).

Ratifying the SAA is needed for Serbia to move toward the EU and Belgrade's goal of obtaining candidate status in 2009, although Brussels conditioned its approval on full Serb cooperation with the Hague-based UN war crimes.

Belgrade - Serbia will ask the United States to extradite an 86-year-old

Moscow - Serbia's foreign minister said Thursday he is confident a gas pipeline deal with Russia will be approved by the Balkan nation's parliament.

Belgrade- Five people were killed and many more, including children, were injured when a bus with Polish tourists overturned on a highway near Belgrade, the Tanjug news agency said.