"This Ministry did not send any request to the Swedish Justice Ministry that the former president of Republika Srpska, Biljana Plavsic, be granted early release," reads a statement issued in Sarajevo.
Bosnia's Ambassador to the UN in New York, Milos Prica, did not use Bosnian state symbols or his title to support such a request, according to the statement.
Media reports on the request for Plavsic's early release from a prison in Sweden mentioned Prica's name.
At the time when Plavsic was president of the Bosnian Serb entity, Prica was head of her office. The TV network BHT 1 today showed a copy of a letter Prica sent on his own behalf to former Swedish justice minister Jan Elliason, asking that Plavsic be granted better prison conditions or early release because of her advanced age.
Plavsic was visited in her Swedish prison last week by Republika Srpska Prime Minister Milorad Dodik, who held the same office at the time Plavsic was entity president.
The spokesman for the ICTY's office in Sarajevo, Mathias Hellman, confirmed for the local media that the letter referring to Plavsic's status did indeed arrive in Stockholm on September 6.
The letter, the content of which was relayed to the Hague tribunal, bears Prica's signature but it does not bear any official signs of the Bosnian state, Hellman said.
He also stressed that there could be no changes to the status of persons convicted by the ICTY unless the tribunal made a decision to that effect.