Gorbachev Proffers Advice for America on Eve of Tour

Mikhail S. Gorbachev, preparing for a U.S. tour, said Thursday that the United States should stop acting as the world’s policeman and focus on building democracies around the globe.

Gorbachev, interviewed by the Associated Press at the offices of the think tank he founded, also said that President Boris N. Yeltsin has pushed Russia too quickly toward reform, putting it in danger of a social explosion.

Gorbachev, 61, was rested and energetic four months after he resigned as president of the Soviet Union, after a failed coup last August and the collapse of the central government in December.

His duty now, he said, is to “support reforms as an individual. Sometimes I may criticize.”

One of his targets was the U.S. government, which he said “has to be reproached” for acting too slowly to support reforms in the former Soviet republics.

Billions of dollars were spent waging the Gulf War, he said, but money has been harder to find “to support democratic changes which will create a new world for 100, 200 years ahead. . . . It is narrow-minded thinking, and I cannot understand it.”

Gorbachev rejected “the proposal that America should become the policeman, teacher or prosecutor or instructor” to the world.

”. . . I am in favor of a new role for America, a constructive and democratic role and a continued contribution to building new international relations,” he said. “Nothing can happen . . . without America. Its role could even be greater.”

Gorbachev generally endorsed Yeltsin, but he warned that his reform policy “has come to a limit which may not be stepped over, or there will be an explosion.”

Yeltsin must slow down “if he is a realistic politician,” Gorbachev said. “If he is not, the wave will sweep him away.”