Europe is close to closing the bleakest chapter of its post-World War II history with the capture by Serbian security forces of Radovan Karadzic, a former Bosnian Serb leader at the top of the most-wanted list for genocide and other war crimes.

Europe complacently thought it had put its past of bloody nationalist rivalries behind it until the Yugoslavian federation began to break up along ethnic and religious lines. Slowly, Serbia's grip was pried loose from parts of the old federation - Slovenia and Croatia - but the Serbs were determined to hold onto Bosnia and, driven by radical nationalists like Karadzic, rid the province of its Muslim population.

The result was a three-year war that left at least 250,000 dead, gave the world the repulsive term "ethnic cleansing" and produced Europe's worst massacre since World War II when Karadzic's forces brushed aside U.N. peacekeepers and methodically executed 8,000 Muslim men and boys.

The Balkans being the great engine of conspiracy theories, the question is: Why did Karadzic's capture occur now? A reasonable supposition is the recent re-election of a pro-Western government and a collective judgment by the Serb people that their future lies with democratic Europe and not authoritarian Russia.