EU: The message that talks on EU entry hinged on handing over those wanted for war crimes has had a spectacular outcome, writes Chris Stephen
Last week's unprecedented flood of suspects handed over to the international war crimes court is a spectacular, if rare, victory for European Union diplomacy.
In just 10 days, five key figures, including Kosovo's prime minister and the former chiefs of the Bosnian and Yugoslav armies, have arrived at the tribunal in The Hague.
All were handed over after months of sustained political pressure by Brussels, with diplomats offering a mixture of carrots and sticks to get compliance.
The result is jail cells full of war crimes suspects and prosecutors working overtime to schedule a mass of new cases.
More importantly, the arrival of so many suspects is a feather in the cap of those arguing at the world's high tables that diplomatic pressure can work as effectively as military force.
The most spectacular handover came on Wednesday with the arrival in The Hague of Ramush Haradinaj, Kosovo's newly installed prime minister and a former commander in the ethnic Albanian Kosovo Liberation Army.
Haradinaj, who faces 37 charges of torture and killing of ethnic Serbs, was joined two days later by former Bosnian Serb police chief Mico Stanisic.
They joined Rasim Delic, former chief of the Muslim-led Bosnian army, and Momcilo Perisic, former chief of the Yugoslav army. Also arriving this month was the former deputy chief of the Bosnian Serb army, Radivoje Miletic.
These arrests come as a huge boost to an ever-more-embattled war crimes court, which had begun to think that the world had forgotten it.
Many UN member-states have not made the promised contributions, leaving the court millions of pounds short and forcing cutbacks.
And its reputation has suffered from the quagmire of the Slobodan Milosevic trial, now in its fourth year and with no end in sight.
Enter the European Union. Croatia and Serbia-Montenegro, formerly Yugoslavia, were told that EU membership talks would not even begin unless suspects were handed over. In the case of Serbia-Montenegro, suspected home to most of the 19 war crimes fugitives, a deadline of March 31st was set.
It took time, but the pressure has worked. A total of 70 suspects are now on, or awaiting, trial in The Hague and the court has high hopes that it can meet its closure deadline of 2010.
Just as important, these men handed themselves in, a healthier method than the former practice of using NATO soldiers to find and arrest them.
Some hurdles remain, however. The Hague's most-wanted suspects, Radovan Karadzic, former president of the Bosnian Serbs, and his former army chief, Ratko Mladic, remain on the run. So does Croatia's top fugitive, General Ante Gotovina.
But spirits are high in The Hague. A total of 111 defendants have appeared for trial, including some of Bosnia's most brutal warlords. And the convictions - and acquittals - there have set precedents for other war crimes courts around the world.
EU diplomats, toasting their success in The Hague, may now feel empowered to suggest to Washington that diplomatic pressure, in the case of Iranian nuclear matters and many other things, can work every bit as effectively as military might.