EU Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn welcomed Tuesday the arrest of former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karazic, calling it "a historic moment for international justice."
Rehn said the arrest suspecte war crimminal would go a long way to helping with reconciliation on the western Balkans, reported dpa.
It was also a milestone in Serbia's cooperation with the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), he said on the fringe of a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Brussels.
"It also proves that the new government of Serbia has the determination to turn the page, leave the nationalist past behind and move towards a European future."
"I now very much look forward to discuss the next steps of Serbia's European orientation," he said in reference to Belgrade's attempt for membership of the European Union.
Rehn said Karadzic's arrest showed that Serbia was very serious and able to cooperate with the ICTY.
"In my view this should have an impact on the relations between the European Union and Serbia," he said.
Karadzic, 63, was arrested on a bus in Belgrade on Monday after more than a decade hiding from justice.
The Hague-based ICTY has indicted Karadzic on charges that include genocide and crimes against humanity, saying he led the brutal ethnic cleansing of non-Serbs during Bosnia's 1992-95 war.
He is charged with ordering the 1995 massacre at Srebrenica, where Bosnian Serbs killed thousands of Bosnian Muslim men and boys. In all, some 100,000 people died in the Bosnian war.