BELGRADE, Dec 8: Fugitive Croatian General Ante Gotovina, one of the three most wanted war crimes suspects from the former Yugoslavia, has been arrested in Spain, UN chief war crimes prosecutor Carla del Ponte said on Thursday.

His detention is a major boost for the international war crimes tribunal and brought immediate calls for extra efforts to catch its top fugitives, Bosnian Serb wartime leader Radovan Karadzic and his military chief Ratko Mladic.

Gotovina was the last wanted war crimes suspect from Croatia and his arrest will ease Zagreb’s path to joining the EU.

He was indicted in 2001 for alleged atrocities when Croatian forces retook parts of the country from Serb rebels in 1995 and has been in hiding since.

“He was arrested this night in Spain ... he is now in detention, finally. He will be transferred to The Hague,” Del Ponte said on a visit to Belgrade.

Gotovina, carrying a false Croatian passport, was arrested in a luxury hotel restaurant in the well-known Tenerife resort of Playa de la Americas on the Canary Islands, Spain said.

A court official said he was being flown to a military base near Madrid.

He was likely to be handed to the UN court in the Netherlands, set up to try war crimes from the breakup of Yugoslavia in the early 1990s, after a few days in jail.

Gotovina’s arrest will help Croatia’s bid to join the European Union, which was long sceptical over how hard Zagreb was trying to track down a man many Croats deem a national hero.

“This removes an important obstacle in Croatia’s accession progress and will send a good signal to the rest of the region,” a spokesman for the British EU presidency said.

“We look forward to seeing Karadzic and Mladic following him as soon as possible.”

Serbia is also seeking to join the bloc and has been under pressure to help catch the pair.—Reuters