Slow justice in the Balkans

Nothing can bring back the dead. But the arrest of Ratko Mladic, the former Bosnian Serb general accused of war crimes, opens the door to justice -- and a kind of resurrection for Serbia.

Mladic is accused of slaughtering 8,000 Muslims in the notorious Srebrenica massacre of 1995 during the Balkan conflict that erupted after Yugoslavia broke apart. His capture after all these years removes a major obstacle to Serbia's joining the European Union -- and in a not-quite-credible coincidence, was announced as the EU's foreign policy chief visited Belgrade, Serbia's capital. Mladic was to be handed over to an international war crimes tribunal in The Hague, where his one-time boss, the former Bosnian Serb political leader Radovan Karadzic, is already on trial. Former Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic died in 2006 during his trial.

Mladic's apprehension is a milestone because he was the last major figure from the conflict who was at large; by now only one of the 161 individuals indicted by The Hague tribunal -- Goran Hadjic, the former leader of the Serbs in Croatia -- remains on the loose.

Nothing can -- or should -- erase the memory of the crimes committed during the Balkan conflict of the early 1990s. But bringing the worst perpetrators to justice is imperative not just for moral reasons, but because it can make a replay less likely by helping the region integrate itself into a larger, and more peaceful, Europe.