The arrest of wanted war crimes suspect Stojan Zupljanin is a boost to Serbia's European Union membership prospects, EU Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn said Wednesday, according to dpa. "I welcome the news confirmed by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) that Stojan Zupljanin has been arrested," Rehn said in a statement. "It is an important step towards full cooperation with the ICTY, which is key to bringing justice and lasting reconciliation to the Western Balkans region," he added. Serbia and the EU signed a Stabilization and Association Agreement (SAA), a pre-membership document, on April 29. But the Netherlands said at the time that the SAA should not be ratified until Belgrade had handed over all remaining war crimes fugitives to The Hague tribunal. Zupljanin, a 57-year-old Bosnian Serb, was arrested in the vicinity of Belgrade, the Serbian war crimes prosecutor's office said. During the 1992-95 Bosnian war, he was a prominent member of Radovan Karadzic's Bosnian Serb authorities which had organized the 1995 massacre of 8,000 Srebrenica Muslims. Zupljanin was one of the four remaining fugitive war crimes suspects charged by ICTY. The remaining three are Karadzic, Ratko Mladic and Croatian Serb leader Goran Hadzic.
