mr president from the earliest days of the treaties of paris and rome the european project has elevated the goal of supranationalism over that of freedom or democracy and in fairness it is exporting its ideology
we are effectively maintaining a protectorate in kosovo as we do in bosnia for the sole purpose of artificially holding together a multi-ethnic state
i was an early supporter of kosovan independence
it seemed to me a very clear case where more than ninety of people had voted in a referendum for self-government that they should be granted it
but we surely ought to extend that principle to national minorities within that territory and to aim at ethnographic frontiers in other words to allow the serbian population conveniently clustered close to serbia proper to do de jure what they are doing de facto and have government from the hands of their own countrymen
there is a conflict between supranationalism and democracy
you can hold a multi-ethnic state together as the yugoslav federation was and also the ottoman empire the habsburg empire and the soviet union but as soon as you give people the vote they opt for democratic self-determination
we should recognise it
