Capture to boost chance of Serbia entering EU

THE surprise capture of Radovan Karadzic, one of the world’s most wanted fugitives, is expected to transform Serbia’s place in the world and greatly increase its chances of entering the European Union.

Serbian authorities had long been suspected of only half-heartedly searching for the former Bosnian Serb leader, who stayed on the run for almost 13 years.

With many Serbs supporting Karadzic as a hero of Serbian nationalism, some prosecutors had given up hope of putting him on trial for the slaughter of thousands of Bosnian Croats and Muslims and an ethnic cleansing campaign that drove more than a million non-Serbs from their homes.

But the appointment of a pro-EU Government in Serbia two weeks ago brought in a regime keen to settle the issue of Karadzic and his former military commander and fellow fugitive Ratko Mladic, who had become the most high-profile obstacles to Serbia joining the EU.

Richard Holbrooke, the former US assistant secretary of state who negotiated the 1995 Dayton Peace Accord, which ended the war in Bosnia, called Karadzic “the Osama bin Laden of Europe” and said his arrest was “a tremendous step forward for Serbia’s desire to join the West”.

“This is the most wanted man in Europe ... a real true architect of mass murder. He was the primary intellectual architect of the ethnic cleansing,” he said.

EU officials promised to immediately begin talks on Serbia’s entry to the union, which would still take years but would mean a massive economic boost for Serbia, where the jobless rate is 30%.

The announcement of his arrest came just one day ahead of a visit to Belgrade by Serge Brammertz, chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.