According to Gorbachev, "the war in Iraq has split Europe because Europeans come out against this war," which is shown by mass antiwar rallies in Europe.
This conflict could and should have been solved by means of negotiations, Gorbachev said.
The former president came to Barcelona to hold a seminar devoted to environmental protection.
Antiwar democratic culture which improved the international climate evolved in the world during the perestroika period in the Soviet Union, an enormous society reform without bloodshed, Mikhail Gorbachev noted. However, this positive potential has been lost and the world undergoes militarization, he added.
The George Bush administration that is planting imperial policy and creating confrontation between the North and the South, the rich and the poor, is responsible for this, Gorbachev stressed. "The USA can win a war but it turns out that there's a need of democratic mechanisms meeting the interests of all sides," said the Russian politician.
Mikhail Gorbachev called on world leaders "to think not only about their power" but also to start creating "a new, more stable, just and humane world order open for cooperation and dialogue." He insists on the necessity to fight injustice and oppression because these are the sources of international terrorism.
The ex-President of the Soviet Union highly assessed the position of the European, first of all, French and German leaders who believe in the political settlement and insist on it.
