Plavsic, once dubbed Serbia's 'Iron Lady', served as a key high official on the Bosnian Serb leadership council throughout the war. Before entering politics as the former Yugoslavia crumbled, she was a professor of natural sciences and faculty dean at the University of Sarajevo.
She was indicted in 2000 by the Hague-based UN tribunal on charges of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity for her role in the wartime campaign to carve out a separate Serb entity in Bosnia. She voluntarily surrendered in 2001 and pleaded guilty to the crime against humanity of persecution. Other charges were withdrawn.
"Mrs. Plavsic disregarded reports of widespread ethnic cleansing and publicly rationalised and justified it," the UN court said after she was sentenced. "She was aware that the key leaders of the Serbian Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina ignored these crimes despite the power to prevent and punish them."
The UN court said that Plavsic's guilty plea and her acknowledgement of responsibility "should promote reconciliation in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the region as a whole". Former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright told a sentencing hearing that Plavsic actively supported the Dayton peace agreement. She "stood up for that at times when it was very difficult, when there were those who wanted to destroy the Dayton Accord", Albright said, according to a court statement.
After the war, she served as president of Republika Srpska and was one of the key officials who implemented the peace agreement signed in Ohio. However, she was considered more liberal than other leaders and a vocal opponent of wartime Bosnian Serb President Radovan Karadzic.
Since her release from prison, Plavsic had withdrawn from public life and lived in Belgrade. Republika Srpska's public broadcaster RTRS reported that current Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik expressed condolences, saying she was his close associate and deserved full state honours.
"Unfortunately, she was unjustly held accountable before the Hague tribunal," said Dodik, whom a Bosnian court barred from public office last year for his efforts to separate Republika Srpska from Bosnia. "But that was part of a trend in which anyone who held a position in Republika Srpska was held accountable, even if they had personally committed no crime."
Plavsic's death comes just weeks after the death of former Bosnian Serb military chief Ratko Mladic, who was also convicted of war crimes.