http://www.smh.com.au/news/0104/03/world/world5.html
By Desmond O'Grady in Saint Vincent, Italy
Mikhail Gorbachev wants Malcolm Fraser to help him save the world.
When the former Soviet leader decided to set up a World Governance Forum, the former Australian prime minister was among the politicians he invited to join him.
A Gorbachev aide said there had been a positive response by telephone from Mr Fraser, but he had been unable to attend the forum's inaugural meeting in the Italian alpine resort of St Vincent last week.
Mr Gorbachev told the meeting that after World War I the League of Nations had been established, after World War II the United Nations, and, after the end of the Cold War, new structures were needed to govern globalisation.
The protests of the "people of Seattle" confirmed his analysis, he said.
Mr Gorbachev said his forum would be a political version of the annual World Economic Forum in Davos, which is confined mainly to businessmen and economists.
Those present included the former Polish leader General Wojciech Jaruzelski and the former Italian prime minister Giulio Andreotti.
"We're not returned [political] soldiers," Mr Andreotti said, "but experienced politicians who realise existing international institutions cannot handle new problems."
Representatives of the Italian and European parliaments attended, and Mr Gorbachev announced support from figures such as Jacques Delors, the former European Union commissioner, Mario Soares, the former Portuguese president, and George Bush snr, the former US president.
The former US presidential candidate George McGovern, who is the US ambassador to the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, described the forum as an "enormously important step forward in the history of the world", and Mr Gorbachev as one of the four greatest 20th-century politicians along with Mahatma Gandhi, Sun Yat-sen and Franklin Roosevelt.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/0104/03/world/world5.html
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