BRUSSELS ? Serbia, which was under heavy international pressure to find the accused war criminal Ratko Mladic after a fruitless chase stretching back more than 15 years, has gone a long way toward securing a path to a European future.
The arrest of Mr. Mladic, the former Bosnian Serb commander, also brings an unprecedented opportunity for reconciliation among the fractious countries of the Balkans.
Reaction to the news from around the world was little short of euphoric. President Nicolas Sarkozy of France said at the Group of 8 summit meeting in Deauville, France, that Mr. Mladic?s capture was ?very good news? and ?one more step towards Serbia?s integration one day into the European Union,? while the United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, called the arrest ?a historic day for international justice.?
Inside Serbia, Mr. Mladic was believed to have long enjoyed the protection of top politicians and important elements of the military and intelligence services. But after the government of President Boris Tadic took power three years ago, efforts to arrest Mr. Mladic turned more serious.
Time was running out: the chief prosecutor of the United Nations war crimes tribunal, scheduled to present a report to the U.N. Security Council, had been expected to be critical of efforts to hunt down Mr. Mladic.
The E.U.?s foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, was visiting Serbia on Thursday and diplomats were divided on whether or not Mr. Mladic?s arrest was a coincidence. The government insisted that it had been actively looking for Mr. Mladic for years.
?We didn?t calculate when we arrested Mladic,? Mr. Tadic said at a press conference in Belgrade, adding that his government had ?been cooperating? with the U.N. tribunal.
A decision on whether to open E.U. membership talks with Serbia is scheduled for the autumn, and European leaders are now much more likely to give the green light. Last October, at the insistence of the Netherlands, E.U. foreign ministers declared that new steps would be approved only if all 27 member countries agreed that Belgrade was cooperating fully with war crime investigations.
The issue is particularly sensitive in the Netherlands; lightly armed Dutch peacekeepers failed to prevent the slaughter of some 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys at Srebrenica in 1995.
?This day is a good day for justice and the victims of General Mladic,? the Dutch prime minister, Mark Rutte, said in a statement.
Though the Balkan countries were told eight years ago that they could join the process of European integration, Serbia was prevented from even starting membership talks because of its failure to arrest Mr. Mladic.
Yet, without the prospect of Serbia joining the European family, there was a gaping hole in the West?s strategy for regional reconciliation ? one that could begin to close.
In the past, European integration helped France and Germany put aside centuries of enmities after World War II, and eased other historical tensions among neighbors, including issues between Britain and Ireland.
Now, despite a series of continuing problems in the region, that prospect finally opens for the Balkans, too.
?This unlocks the process for the whole region,? said Heather Grabbe, director of the Open Society Foundations in Brussels and a former E.U. official. ?If Serbia can start E.U. membership negotiations with Montenegro, that allows others to do so when they are ready.?
With the government in Belgrade on the European track, the troublesome Bosnian Serb leadership is left with less room to pursue a separatist path that threatens to undermine Bosnia-Herzegovina.
?This is a symbol that Serbia is ready to put the past behind it. It rehabilitates Serbia?s reputation as a country that can deliver the rule of international law,? Ms. Grabbe said.
Of course, the Balkans still face numerous obstacles, including the status of Kosovo, the divisions within Bosnia-Herzegovina and political and economic difficulties in Albania and Macedonia.
Croatia has just been through a similar difficult moment in coming to terms with its past with the sentencing of Ante Gotovina, a former Croatian general. He received a 24-year sentence from the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague, the U.N. court that has tried those held responsible for atrocities committed in the Balkan conflicts of the 1990s.
Croatia is in the closing stretch of its lengthy negotiations with the European Union, having reached agreement on 30 of the 35 policy areas required.
And if and when they start, Serbia?s membership talks with the European Union will take years to complete as well.
After years of false leads about the whereabouts of Mr. Mladic and frequent reports that his capture was imminent, many diplomats had given up hope that he would be caught.
?I never believed I would live to see this day,? said one E.U. diplomat who has followed the issue for years but was not authorized to speak publicly. ?If followed through correctly, a surge of goodwill should flow to Serbia because finally they have come through, and this was not easy.?
Mr. Rutte, the Dutch prime minister, emphasized that not only was the arrest a vindication of the Dutch pressure, but it also ?sends a strong message that leaders directly responsible for crimes against humanity will eventually have to account for their deeds.?
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: May 26, 2011
An earlier version of this article misspelled the given name of the president of France. He is Nicolas Sarkozy, not Nicholas.
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