During the week the New Policy Forum held its first international conference in Sofia.

Since May 2010 the organization has been the successor of the one-time World Political Forum set up in 1990s by emblematic leaders including Mikhail Gorbachev, George Bush Sr., Helmut Kohl, Giulio Andreotti, Henry Kissinger etc.

Among others the conference in Sofia was joined by Mikhail Gorbachev, former Romanian President Ion Iliescu, former Bulgarian President Petar Stoyanov, former Turkish PM Mesut Yilmaz, Yugoslavia’s last Foreign Minister Budimir Loncar, the former activist of the Polish Solidarity trade union Adam Michnik and by Russian businessman Alexander Lebedev.

The fact that most participants are past the peak of their political careers did not make the discussion with the motto Europe Looks East less interesting.

Mikhail Gorbachev upheld the thesis that trans-national cooperation involving America, Europe and Russia should be rethought, and backed the idea of a European security treaty.

The former Bulgarian President Petar Stoyanov pointed out that some of the Balkan countries were already EU members and that the rest had declared willingness to join the community, so the only way now was to finally integrate the Balkans in EU.

Adam Michnik termed folly fears that NATO could become a threat to Russia and said that the real threat for it included Islamic fundamentalism and, in the future, most probably China as a new great power.

The New Policy Forum aims to support and continue what the non-existent Club of Rome used to do.

That think-tank attracted experts from both the East and West as early as the Cold War years and was discussing global issues.

At the end of the year the ideas laid out in Sofia will be summed up and published in a report on relevant global issues that will be presented to the United Nations, the European Union, G-8 and G-20 countries, the