Gorbachev to visit S. Korea to speak on global warming

SEOUL, Sept. 26 (Yonhap) -- Mikhail S. Gorbachev, the last president of the Soviet Union and a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, will visit Seoul next week to call for actions to save the earth from global warming, a local environmental group said Friday.

Gorbachev, the founder and current president of Green Cross International, a
Geneva-based non-profit organization, is expected to give the keynote speech at
next week's forum titled "From Russia to Tuvalu, Climate Change and Our Future."
The forum, hosted by World Cyber College and Korea Green Foundation, will tackle
global environmental challenges including rising sea levels threatening Tuvalu, a
group of low-lying islands near Fiji in the South Pacific, the Green foundation
said.
Gorbachev, who received the 1990 Nobel Prize for helping bring down communism in
the Soviet Union and end the Cold War, has since reinvented himself as an
environmentalist traveling the world to urge action.
A group of environmental officials and scholars, including Tavaud Teii, Tuvalu's
deputy prime minister concurrently serving as the environment minister, as well
as Lee Man-eui, Korea's environment minister, and Goh Kun, Korea's former prime
minister and the current director of the Climate Change Information Center, are
expected to participate in the one-day forum.
The former Soviet leader will also attend peace and religious events in
provincial cities before departing Korea on Sept. 5.
hkim@yna.co.kr
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