Gorbachev to form new Russian party

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev will join forces with Russian tycoon Alexander Lebedev to launch a new political party independent of the Kremlin, the billionaire businessman said on Tuesday.

Gorbachev, 77, won the 1990 Nobel peace prize for allowing the peaceful revolutions the previous year that brought democracy to Eastern Europe after decades of Soviet control.

Though hugely admired in the West, he is deeply unpopular at home for presiding over the 1991 break-up of the Soviet Union that led to economic and political chaos. When he last ran for president, in 1996, he won just half a percent of the vote.

Gorbachev initiated plans for the new party, said Lebedev on his website here

"He gave our people freedom but we just can't learn how to use it," wrote Lebedev, who said the provisional name of the new party is the 'Independent Democratic Party'.

The party will press for legal and economic reform and promote the growth of independent media, said Lebedev, who does not plan to bankroll the party himself but said it should be financed only from "non-state sources."

He said the party favored "less state capitalism," the development of independent media, reform of the justice system and a stronger role for parliament, adding that it would take part in elections.

However, Mikhail Kuznetsov, the deputy chairman of Gorbachev's present political organization, the Union of Social Democrats, said winning seats was not the objective