Anyone who recalls, much less experienced, the genocidal "ethnic cleansing" of Bosnia will rejoice at the arrest of Radovan Karadzic. After more than a decade on the run, the former Bosnian Serb leader will answer for his deeds, and the region will take a big step toward the future.

Only two other men have as much blood on their hands in the Balkans. The deposed leader of Serbia, Slobodan Milosevic, died in a Hague prison cell two years ago while on trial at the U.N. war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. Bosnian Serb military commander Ratko Mladic remains a free man, probably in Serbia, but should be taken soon.

The chief U.N. prosecutor at The Hague, Serge Brammertz, declared Mr. Karadzic's capture, announced late Monday, "an important day for international justice." Not so fast. It was political willpower that finally put Mr. Karadzic behind bars.

The history is worth recalling. The 1992-95 Bosnian war ended when military intervention led by the United States came to the rescue of the Bosnian Muslims and forced the Serbs to the negotiating table at Dayton. Until then, a weak U.N. peacekeeping force had looked on while the three Serbian butchers carved up Bosnia -- most tragically at Srebrenica on July 11, 1995. On that day, Serb soldiers overran a "safe haven" guarded by Dutch blue helmets and murdered 8,000 Muslim boys and men, the worst massacre in Europe since World War II.

America lost its nerve in the early post-Dayton years and failed to grab Mr. Karadzic before he went into hiding. But then the U.S. and Europe made the capture of indicted war criminals the condition for Serbia's re-entry into civilized Western company. Two weeks ago, a new government committed to membership in the European Union took office in Belgrade, and last week a new security chief was named. It's hardly a coincidence, as Freedom House pointed out, that Mr. Karadzic was captured days later.

The one dark lining is the prospect of "international justice." A judge at the U.N. tribunal yesterday said a Karadzic trial wouldn't start for "years." Uh-oh. The last thing his victims deserve is a repeat of the Milosevic case, which dragged on for five years and was ended, with no verdict in sight, by his fatal heart attack. We have a better idea. Try these men in Bosnia, where the crimes took place. It's now a sovereign country with legitimate courts and EU aspirations in its own right. It would be the just thing to do.

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