Mrs Plavsic admitted a leading role in the persecution of non-Serbs

The Justice Ministry said Mrs Plavsic had arrived at a remand centre in Stockholm and would be transferred soon to a permanent prison.

The 72-year-old is the most senior politician to be convicted by the international tribunal in The Hague.

She was found guilty in February of charges of persecuting Croats and Muslims during the Bosnian War.

The judge said she had colluded in the deportation and unlawful killing of thousands of people within the breakaway Serb Republic in the early 1990s.

But he took account of the fact that she had accepted her responsibility, felt remorse for her crimes and had surrendered voluntarily.

Mrs Plavsic is expected to serve her sentence at Hinseberg, Sweden's only high security prison.

Critics have voiced concern that her living conditions will be too comfortable and that she will be released early.

However, Swedish Justice Minister Thomas Bodstrum told Reuters news agency that the government might deviate from the usual practice of granting conditional release after two-thirds of the sentence has been served.

Mrs Plavsic's former close associate, the wartime Bosnian Serb leader, Radovan Karadzic, is still at large.