Copyright CanWest Interactive, Inc. Jul 23, 2008

Serbia took a big step toward joining the European Union by arresting Radovan Karadzic, the former Bosnian Serb leader, two weeks after a pro-Western government took power in Belgrade with the goal of ending Serbia's isolation.

"Everyone is jumping for joy -- finally, finally," Bernard Kouchner, the French Foreign Minister, said in Brussels yesterday.

"It's certainly a good thing for bringing Serbia closer to the European Union."

While the EU pressed Serbia to hunt down two other suspects, the arrest shows President Boris Tadic's determination to bury the legacy of Serb nationalism and forge closer ties between the nation of 7.5 million and the European market.

After years of see-sawing power-sharing deals between pro-EU and nationalist parties, the arrest reflected the growing leverage of Mr. Tadic, whose Democratic Party on July 7 joined a coalition with the Socialist Party of Serbia and parties of national minorities under Mirko Cvetkovic, the new Prime Minister.

"This is a major victory for Tadic and this government," said Milan Kovacevic, a Belgrade-based independent economist.

"This will have a major impact on the economy. The Serbian economy is exhausted and this is a chance for its overhaul."

Meeting in Brussels, EU foreign ministers hailed the "important step" on Serbia's slow path to membership.

Still, they declined to immediately start implementing a pre-entry pact with Serbia, because two other suspects remain at large -- former Bosnian Serb General Ratko Mladic, 66, and Goran Hadzic, 49, who headed a breakaway Serb faction in Croatia.

Mr. Karadzic and Gen. Mladic have been indicted for genocide over the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, in which about 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys were murdered.

Other hurdles to Serbia's EU bid include the status of Kosovo, the mostly ethnic Albanian province that declared independence from Serbia in February with the backing of the EU's biggest powers and the United States.

Serbia is pressing the United Nations to brand Kosovo's breakaway as illegal. While Belgrade will not go to war to reclaim the province, it "will not concede a millimetre of ground, using all political, diplomatic and legal means," said Vuk Jeremic, the Serbian Foreign Minister.

Still, the European Union celebrated Mr. Karadzic's arrest as a sign that Serbia, its forces driven from Kosovo by NATO in 1999, is now on an irreversible path to EU-style democracy.

Serbia said its goal is to become a formal "candidate" for EU entry by early 2009.

Olli Rehn, the EU enlargement commissioner, called on bloc members to reward Serbia by implementing the free-trade provisions of the pre-entry pact "so that we can sooner consider candidate status."

The 27-nation EU has made "full co-operation" with war-crimes prosecutors its condition for putting Serbia, once the dominant republic in Yugoslavia, on a faster track to membership.

Political leaders in the Netherlands, scarred by the failure of Dutch peacekeeping troops to prevent the Srebrenica massacre, have taken the hardest line on the need for Serbia to round up war-crimes suspects.

While welcoming Mr. Karadzic's arrest, Maxime Verhagen, the Dutch Foreign Minister, told NOS public radio Serbia still needs to take "other steps" by putting the remaining fugitives behind bars.

Croatia followed a similar path toward the EU, winning the go-ahead to start entry talks in 2005 only after tipping war-crimes sleuths off as to the whereabouts of a Croatian suspect, General Ante Gotovina, accused of atrocities against ethnic Serbs.

On a day of almost universal rejoicing at Mr. Karadzic's capture, Russia, Serbia's old ally, sounded a sour note.

Dmitry Rogozin, Russia's envoy to NATO, said Western leaders should join Mr. Karadzic in the dock.

"If the Karadzic case merits being considered in The Hague, then next to him in the dock should be those who took the decision to bomb entirely innocent people, hundreds of whom died during the 'democratization' of the Balkans by the West," he said.

The Russian Foreign Ministry stressed that any trial should be "impartial," accusing the UN war crimes tribunal of "an often biased approach" and said it should be disbanded.

Gennady Zyuganov, the Russian Communist party leader, said the arrest was an "unseemly step" and resulted from "every form of crude political, economic and media pressure put on Belgrade by the West."

It was not clear when the Serb government will hand Mr. Karadzic over to the war-crimes tribunal, based in The Hague.

After word of the arrest spread, dozens of supporters of ultranationalist organizations protested in front of the Belgrade court where he is in custody.

Credit: Aleksandra Nenadovic in Belgrade and James G. Neuger in Brussels; Bloomberg News, With Files From Agence France-Presse