Your roots go far back, your tradition of commitment to the values preached by the Gospel has stood for more than thirteen hundred years. To your forefathers, these values have always borne the fruits of tolerance and understanding, of respect for the neighbouring nations and cooperation with them, and they have adhered to them even when they had to struggle to regain independence for your nation. Stay true to that model. The modern history of your country, and of Europe, urges you to do so. For many nations this century has been marked by the quest for independence and peace, and often it has been a hard and painful one.
Every nation has the right to be politically recognised as a nation.
The nature of a federation is a free alliance of individual nations. Each of the federated nations, however, in certain circumstances and observing certain requirements, retains the right to leave the union and establish an independent state. This is exactly what happened within the former Yugoslav federation in 1991. Each of the republics which came into being as a result of that process has the right to become a sovereign state and that right cannot be denied by any international order. In view of these fundamental moral and legal standards of the international order, it should be clearly said that the war in the Balkans, which continues with such an appalling death-toll, cannot be justified in any way.