Gorbachev hopes Obama will carry out 'perestroika' in US

Reiterating his faith in Barack Obama, former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev has expressed hope that the US President will carry out 'perestroika' in his country despite his declining popularity rating. ''I said that America needed perestroika and changes were in store,'' Mr Gorabachev said at the presentation of CNN founder Ted Turner's book ''Call me Ted''. He said that he had delivered a lecture in the United States three years ago and was asked what was in store for the US. ''Obama expressed hopes of the nation, and I support the decision to bestow him with the Nobel Peace Prize,'' Itar-Tass quoted him as saying yesterday. He said he believed the American 'perestroika' would be more profound than the Soviet one. ''The US must realise that its monopoly is over but it will remain a leader for long. The United States should seek a new global world, because it is unable to tackle many problems, such as ecology, unaided,'' Mr Gorbachev said. This is not for the first time that former Soviet leader has said the United States needs to carry out far-reaching reforms if it is to successfully meet modern social, economic and environmental challenges.

''In the West, the break up of the Soviet Union was viewed as a total victory that proved that the West did not need to change. Western leaders were convinced that they were at the helm of the right system and of a well-functioning, almost perfect economic model,'' he said in an article for the Washington Post, in June.

''But then came the economic crisis of 2008 and 2009, and it became clear that the new Western model was an illusion that benefited chiefly the very rich,'' he wrote. ''The current global crisis demonstrates that the leaders of major powers, particularly the United States, had missed the signals that called for a perestroika. The result is a crisis that is not just financial and economic.

It is political, too,'' he noted.

Nobel Peace Prize winner Gorbachev is widely respected in the United States and Europe for his role in ending the Cold War, but unpopular in Russia for the reforms that led to the collapse of the Soviet Union and the ensuing chaos.

-- (UNI) -- 04DF3.xml

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