NATO Nabs a Serb General

Slobodan Milosevic has good reason to be paranoid. NATO on Wednesday swooped down on the Bosnian countryside to arrest General Radislav Krstic, the commander of the Bosnian Serb unit that massacred 8,000 Muslim men in the U.N. "safe haven" of Srebrenica in 1995. "Even though he was on leave in Serbia at the time, Krstic would have had to authorize the killings," says TIME correspondent Edward Barnes. "He'll also be able to answer questions over Milosevic's involvement in the most important massacre of the war."

The Serb president has in recent weeks engaged in a frenzy of purges of his ruling circle, fearing that his army may turn against him. Although Milosevic hasn't yet been indicted as a war criminal, that prospect was raised earlier this year as a means of pressuring the Serb president to withdraw from Kosovo. "Krstic's arrest certainly turns up the heat on Milosevic," says Barnes. "The West can see how shaky Milosevic is, and Krstic's arrest will further destabilize him." Its pace may be glacial, but justice has not forsaken the Balkans.