To beat piracy on the high seas, the EU and India should recognise SomalilandWhat is sad of course is that Monty Munford is calling for the EU to recognise Somaliland. This of course will not happen anyway, due to the EU's and particular the ACP's links with current regiemes across Africa.
The simple thing to do would be to admit Somaliland to the Commonwealth, at least initially as an observer. After all Somaliland, unlike some members of tehCommonwealth was indeed a British Protectorate, and thus fulfills the requirements of membership with ease.
Munford is absolutely right about the country. It is as close as you can get to a functioning democracy in East Africa, and is, as its snaggle toothed former Ambassador told me when I first met him in a pub under Charing Cross, pint in hand,
"A drinking man's Muslim country".But the fact that Munford has called on India (a soverign nation) and the EU to recognise it worries me. Cannot the UK recognise a country which after all was one of its own. Or are ecisipons like that, surely so simple, no longer the preserve of Her majesty's Government?
We in UKIP believe wholeheatedly in our own self determination, the people of this country believe in self determination. So why on earth cannot our own Government support that principle in the case of Somaliland?
2 comments:
Well, paint me ignorant. I had to Google Somaliland to make sure you hadn't made it up.
Learn something every day, said my Granda'. So, ta for that.
Great little country, and on our side in the war on terror.
It has deep water anchorage, a (intersting) multiparty electoral system, free trade, Commonwealth War Graves, huge off shore gas deposits (if the 50's surveys are anything to go by and the third biggest landing strip in Africa (one of those places the space shuttle can land in emergency).
It is not involved, well any more than it can help in the chaos that is Somalia, and has legal right on its side for independence.
These people we should be helping.
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