Radovan Karadzic, the Bosnian Serb warlord, had assumed Mr Dabic's identity as a cover during the autocratic rule of his mentor Slobodan Milosevic, officials said on Thursday.

The real Mr Dabic lives in Ruma, a Serbian town just north of Belgrade, according to Mr Rasim Ljajic, a government official in charge of war crimes.

'Dabic's ID differs from Karadzic's only in the photographs of the two,' Mr Ljajic said.

That discovery certainly altered Mr Dabic's plans for the day.

'Instead of working in the garden, I'm being besieged by reporters and answering telephone calls,' he said, adding that he had no idea how a copy of his identity card ended up in Karadzic's hands.

'This is unfair. Instead of finding out who...cooked this up, I'm being questioned by police,' said Mr Dabic.

Officials were trying to figure out whether Karadzic's identity card was a fake or an official copy of Mr Dabic's original.

Karadzic was posing as a New Age healer when he was captured in Belgrade on Monday. He now awaits extradition to the United Nations war crimes tribunal in The Hague in the Netherlands. Serbia's state-run daily Politika said his lawyer had filed an appeal against the extradition late on Friday.

AP