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- SYDNEY (Agence France Presse) - Former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev
called Monday for a negotiated end to the war in Kosovo arguing that NATO
has already broken all its teeth trying to cripple Yugoslavia.
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- In the only face-to-face interview he
has given during a brief visit to Australia to deliver "motivational"
lectures, he told ABC radio here he was very pleased Yugoslavia was beating
the combined might of NATO.
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- He also questioned what NATO might be
able to achieve against nuclear powers or larger countries when it has
proved itself incapable of defeating Yugoslavia.
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- "Two thirds of the world's fire
power -- NATO's firepower -- cannot cope with Yugoslavia," said the
Nobel Peace Prize winner.
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- "So what would they do with China,
with India, with Russia or Indonesia or whatever other countries?"
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- He said NATO could destroy Yugoslavia
by bombing. "But morally, politically, they have been defeated,"
he said. "The problem is that they can't stop."
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- Gorbachev, who as Soviet leader from
1985-90 played the key role in brokering the pact that ended the Cold War,
also accused the United States of abandoning the post-Cold War agreement
for a new world order.
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- He said efforts had been made to improve
the efficiency of the United Nations so that it could address the challenges
of a post Cold War era.
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- But these were thrown out and some people
were impeding UN reforms, he said. "Now it is clear who these people
are.
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- "Look at what's happening with the
European security process. Yugoslavia is just proving the point that I've
been making for some time.
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- "That is that Americans have changed
a strategy that we initially agreed with America and with other western
countries and Nato countries.
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- "The Americans have abandoned that
strategy that we created for a post Cold War period. They are instead implementing
a strategy of the only superpower. They just want to confirm themselves
as the only superpower."
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