"To resolve problems through negotiation is a very childish approach."

The Maharishi Mahesh Yogi has a plan to save the world:

Physically isolated from all but a handful of attendants, Maharishi contemplates the lessons of the Vedas, the vast Sanskrit canon compiled some 3,500 years ago. From it, he evolves solutions for today's troubled world:

•Tear down major structures — the White House and the United Nations among them — and rebuild them according to Vedic architectural plans that harmonize construction with nature.

•Send meditation groups to world hot spots as psychic shock troops whose combined positive energy will dispel negativity, reduce crime, ease conflict and promote world peace.

•And his latest project: a $10 trillion plan to eradicate poverty.

A prominently displayed advertisement has run daily since mid-December in the International Herald Tribune seeking investors of a minimum $60,000 for a World Peace Bond, promising a 10 to 15 percent annual return.

His idea is to buy 5 billion acres in 100 developing countries for labor-intensive farming, providing employment and income for the world's poorest people by feeding the First-World market for organic food.

The ads so far have failed to produce any takers. "We don't expect anything so soon. Because the project is big, people have to examine it from their different angles," said project director Benny Feldman, a Mexican economist.

Governments can't do it, Maharishi believes. Neither can they bring peace: "To resolve problems through negotiation is a very childish approach."

A few hundred meditators on either side of a conflict is all that's needed to create an aura of peace.

So, away with childish approaches. Get that $10 trillion and run with it. After examining it from different angles, of course. We First-Worlders await the tasty fruits and veggies.