Former Bosnian Serb army head Ratko Mladic has appeared before judges at a war crimes tribunal at The Hague, but did not enter a plea on what he called monstrous and obnoxious charges.
General Mladic was arrested last week in Serbia after 16 years on the run from charges of having committed atrocities during the 1992-95 Bosnian war.
On Friday, he made his first court appearance at the International Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, telling chief judge Alphons Orie that he was "gravely ill" and did not want "one sentence or letter" of the indictment against him read out in court.
He looked aged, with the right side of his mouth drooping and appeared to slur his words slightly.
When asked to enter a plea, General Mladic said the charges were "monstrous" and "obnoxious" and he needed more than a month to respond.
"I am a gravely ill man. I was taken to the prison infirmery and three binders of documents were brought to me. I haven't read any of that and I haven't signed anything because I was in such a poor state."
General Mladic faces 11 counts, including masterminding the massacre of nearly 8000 Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica in 1995, the BBC reports.
He has has been indicted on charges of genocide, persecution, extermination, murder, deportation, inhumane acts, terror, deportation and hostage-taking for his alleged part in a plot to achieve the "elimination or permanent removal" of Muslims from large parts of Bosnia in pursuit of a "Greater Serbia".
As well as Srebrenica, Europe's worst atrocity since World War II, General Mladic is also charged over the 44-month siege of the capital Sarajevo from May 1992 in which 10,000 people died.
After the charges were read out, the court went into private session so General Mladic could tell judges about his state of health.
If he does not enter a plea within 30 days, the judges will enter pleas of not guilty on his behalf. A new hearing was set for 4 July.
Relatives of some of the victims gathered outside the courtroom in the Netherlands before the hearing on Friday.
