Analysis:Political pragmatism won out in the end over any sense of loyalty to Karadzic, writes Daniel McLaughlin.
MANY SERBS and western officials had all but given up hope of seeing Radovan Karadzic captured, such was the apparent lack of determination to find him and the supposed impenetrability of the places and the people among whom he hid.
And until now, even the most optimistic Karadzic hunter would not have believed that he could be grabbed by a government comprising the Socialist Party and founded by his old ally and fellow warmonger, former Serb president Slobodan Milosevic.
But just as Karadzic's arrest, apparently alone in a Belgrade suburb, gave the lie to talk of hideouts in well-guarded Bosnian caves and Montenegrin monasteries, so the unlikely coalition between the socialists and Milosevic's former nemesis, the liberal, pro-western Democratic Party, has so far confounded the political sceptics.
The government is only a few weeks old, but is now poised to hand to the UN war crimes court a man who defied its predecessors for over a decade, and this despite the socialists still, officially at least, opposing such extraditions and questioning the tribunal's authority to do its work.
By subduing long-held grievances, the socialists made themselves a realistic partner for the democrats.
And that newfound pragmatism chimes with the democrats' call to Serbs to strive for future prosperity rather than the righting of perceived historical wrongs.
"This shows the government is serious about removing all obstacles on Serbia's path to the European Union," said analyst Dusan Pavlovic.
"It is guided by the principle that the first and most painful moves should be tackled first, as a government is at its strongest at the beginning."
Many socialists are still uncomfortable with the democrats and their pledge of full co-operation with the UN court at The Hague, where many rank-and-file members believe Milosevic was murdered in the most extreme example of its anti-Serb prejudice.
Socialist leader Ivica Dacic, careful not to be seen as a lackey of the Tadic and the West, insisted that the regular police and security services, which he now controls as interior minister, "had nothing to do with locating and arresting Radovan Karadzic".
While the far-right Radical party condemned the arrest of Karadzic, the slightly less shrill nationalists around former premier Vojislav Kostunica grudgingly acknowledged that it would move Serbia closer to membership of the EU.
Kostunica's longtime alliance with Tadic collapsed when he insisted that Belgrade should freeze ties with the EU until it rejected Kosovo's independence.
Kostunica and his allies, who failed for years to hand over Karadzic, now watch glumly from the sidelines as an unlikely team of democrats and socialists enjoy rare western praise for their capture of the fugitive - and await a political dividend from Brussels.