Opening the forum, Federal Minister of Foreign Affairs Frank-Walter Steinmeier declared: "The window of history has opened. The new US President offers new thinking on the whole spectrum of disarmament and security policy. Russia has a new president too, who belongs to the generation that is little influenced by the cold war."

Based on the already delivered speeches we can already draw some conclusions. First, no one in Europe wants to come into conflict with Russia, and not because of great fear or profound respect towards her. The reason lies in Russian armaments, which even outdated, pose a great threat to the whole world. Europe as well as the whole world want a firm guarantee that Russian troops will not rush «to protect their citizens» as it happened in South Ossetia. That was why EU High Representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy Javier Solana underlined in his speech that Europe should treat seriously Russia's suggestions on forming a new system of European security. Javier Solana even proposed a new model instead of the Helsinki Agreement, which no longer reflects modern entities and phenomena.

"The idea of 'Helsinki 2' would be difficult to materialize, but we can suggest 'Helsinki +'," he noted. "Cooperation between the EU and Russia has been very positive recently. I hope that will continue and be expanded to the financial crisis and climate change," Solana said.

In his turn, NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer stated his readiness to engage Russia in the discussions on anti-missile defense system but added that he saw no possibility of a serious discussion of such an important architecture, with Russia building bases inside Georgia, a country that doesn't want those bases. In his words, he also supported the proposal of Russian President Dmitry Medvedev of forming wider Euro-Atlantic security structures.

Russia poses no military threat either to the EU or to NATO, declared French President Nikolas Sarkozy. "I don't think the Russia of today is a threat to us and we must recover our confidence towards Moscow," stated Sarkozy.

Russian Deputy Prime-Minister Sergey Ivanov noted that Russia would give up the idea of installing "Iskander" missile systems in the Kaliningrad region only if the United States would change her mind about establishing the third position region of anti-missile defense in Poland and the Czech Republic. "Russia has delayed the installment of "Iskander" missiles in Kaliningrad until the United States establishes the third position region in Europe. If the anti-missile defense systems are not stationed in Poland and the Czech Republic, Russia will abandon the plans of deploying missiles on the EU's doorstep in Kaliningrad," declared the RF Deputy Prime-Minister. Ivanov also urged the USA to sign another treaty with Russia instead of the Intermediate Nuclear Force Treaty (INF) and join efforts in combating nuclear proliferation. He also noted that the US plans on basing anti-missile defense systems in Europe are aimed at encircling Russia. "The third position region is not just a combination of a dozen of antiballistic missiles and radars. It is part of American strategic infrastructure aimed to control Russia's nuclear missile potential," declared Ivanov.

In a word, there is a colossal haggling going on, in which theoretically not everybody can win: someone will have to sacrifice something. But the new picture of the world is already being outlined: it is becoming bipolar. The economic crisis played rather an important role in this shift, but even irrespective of it, history shows that long supremacy of a country in the end results in a collapse or even in the complete loss of the leader.

Another central topic of discussion at the Forum will be the US plans on expanding military presence in Afghanistan. According to the already announced plan, the US government is determined to send another 30 thousand soldiers to Afghanistan and counts on the support of her allies, Germany in particular.

However, more than once representatives of the German government have announced their reluctance to send additional military units to Afghanistan. By the way, shortly before the conference Press Secretary of German Chancellor Angela Merkel declared that not in the least this means end of negotiations.

And, of course, there is also the issue of Iranian nuclear program to be discussed yet. "Germany is hoping for a diplomatic solution to the conflict over Iran's nuclear program but we are ready for tougher sanctions if no progress is made. I expect the new U.S. administration will make its approach clear to all of us in coming months. We are ready to walk this path together," stated German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Speaker of the Iranian Parliament Ali Larijani stated the unconditional support of the Hamas militants and underlined that the Holocaust issue is simply a matter of interpretation and everyone has a right to have their own view on the issue. All this aroused indignation in all the attendees and it seemed Larijani could not expect such vigorous a resistance on the part of the conference participants.