Speaking in different languages

The first day of the jubilee session of the UN General Assembly reflected the drama of the present situation: the superpowers seem to find it easier to return to confrontation than to combine efforts in a common struggle against the evils of the world.

There have been hard times in the history of the United Nations, but never before have the world leaders driven themselves so deeply into a deadlock of misunderstanding. Bill Clinton and Boris Yeltsin spoke in different languages.

Clinton spoke about global evils threatening each of us: ethnic and religious differences, terrorism, organized crime, proliferation of mass destruction weapons, while the Russian president adopted an anti-Western and anti-NATO rhetoric. He spoke of NATO's eastward expansion as a very acute problem, and with particular pathos he underlined a gross violation of the UN Charter: the use of force in Bosnia, ignoring the Security Council.

The Russian president spoke as if the summit already had taken place and ended in failure ... It seems that the Kremlin has already made its decisions. The president's advisers fail to realize that the opposition will not be satisfied with this bone, that (Russian Foreign Minister Andrei) Kozyrev's blood will not be enough for them, and that the stakes in this struggle are far higher.

The Americans are resolutely against a Russian veto or "a dual key" principle on former Yugoslavia. Only one possibility remains: to divide Bosnia into zones of responsibility, which would actually be zones of occupation. Obviously, in these conditions, any talk of a common Europe will become pointless.

-- Segodnya, Moscow