Lech Walesa: World needs to combat Iranian threat

     The founder of Poland's anti-communist Solidarity movement and former Polish president Lech Walesa said Monday that a new organization is needed to lead the fight against international terrorism in the 21st century and deal with the Iranian nuclear threat since the United Nations has proved itself to be woefully ineffective in facing the challenges of the global world. "No institution has been effective in the fight against terrorism so we need to establish a new body which will deal with all the global issues or ask the US to lead the world in the fight against terrorism," Walesa said in an interview with The Jerusalem Post during a trip to Israel. The 64-year-old Nobel Peace Prize laureate, whose Solidarity trade union helped topple communism in 1989, added that it was "pure fact" that the UN had been ineffective in dealing with the three major problems of the 21st century, which he listed as terrorism, shifting borders and anti-Semitism, racism, and ethnic cleansing. He noted that the UN was established at a time when there was a bipolar system with two conflicting blocs, and was now anachronistic in dealing with the central issues facing the world today. "Unless we allow ourselves to undergo global control, we shall not survive this century," he said. Walesa argued that global agreement was essential to work out everything from Iran's nuclear threat to the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, conflicts, he opined, which paled in comparison to the fight against communism.(09,44)