Gorbachev Calls McCain's "League Of Democracies" A Mistake

Miami, FL (AHN) - At a speaking engagement in Florida, former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev took issue with Sen. John McCain's call for a new "League of Democracies" and said any move that undermines the United Nations is a "mistake."

"Great powers set an example to the world and must give a chance to the United Nations to develop a new global system," Gorbachev said. "We must not, instead of the United Nations, propose NATO or some kind of a coalition of democratic countries, as suggested by Sen. McCain. I think that to replace the U.N. with that kind of an organization would be wrong."

"This proposal I regard as a mistake," he said.

"I think that we must reform the United Nations, we must give new functions and create new committees to properly address the problems we have. We must reform the United Nations, we cannot destroy it," Gorbachev commented during a speech at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Hollywood, Florida.

"Our political leaders and our political elites must get rid of the confrontational attitudes of the past, must get rid of unilateralism and a monopoly of domination," he said, adding that "had the U.N. been more influential, the United States wouldn't have been able to start a military action in Iraq. The U.N. Security Council was against it, even many allies of the United States were against it."

The criticism follows a speech McCain delivered on March 26 to the World Affairs Council in Los Angeles, CA. The presumptive Republican nominee outlined what he saw as a new international alliance of democratic open-market nations that wouldn't include Russia or China.

"In such a world, where power of all kinds is more widely and evenly distributed, the United States cannot lead by virtue of its power alone," McCain said.

"We have to strengthen our global alliances as the core of a new global compact - a League of Democracies - that can harness the vast influence of the more than 100 democratic nations around the world to advance our values and defend our shared interests," he added.

"We should start by ensuring that the G-8, the group of eight highly industrialized states, becomes again a club of leading market democracies: it should include Brazil and India but exclude Russia," McCain continued.

The Arizona senator said that "Americans should welcome the rise of a strong, confident European Union as we continue to support a strong NATO."

He added that "Rather than tolerate Russia's nuclear blackmail or cyber attacks, Western nations should make clear that the solidarity of NATO, from the Baltic to the Black Sea, is indivisible and that the organization's doors remain open to all democracies committed to the defense of freedom."