Ethnic Strife New Threat for Continent : Europe: At the dawn of an era, leaders worry about local clashes. The EC proposes a panel to help settle feuds and maintain stability.

Soon after French President Francois Mitterrand opened the summit meeting of the 34-nation Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe on Monday, calling it the “end of an epoch,” attention turned to problems facing the beginning of the new era.

Italian Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti, speaking on behalf of the 12-member European Community, recommended creating a mechanism designed to defuse the underlying ethnic tensions that have surfaced in the aftermath of Communist rule in Eastern Europe.

Andreotti, as current president of the community, declared that rising ethnic and nationalistic differences constitute “a genuine factor for instability in Europe.”

The Italian leader said he backs a French proposal for the formation of a panel of experts who could serve as arbitrators to assist in settling minority strife.

The CSCE summit is expected to approve on Wednesday the establishment of a so-called Conflict Prevention Center in Vienna, but Andreotti’s proposal was more urgent and specific.

Concern over European ethnic problems was also sounded by Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev in his opening speech Monday night, in which he warned of the “snowball effect” of the “danger of an outbreak of nationalism and separatism.”

The danger of local conflict has now replaced the threat of a major war in Europe because of the end of the Cold War, Gorbachev said, and because of the fact that “today the Soviet Union and the United States no longer act as adversaries but as partners.”

In his remarks, President Bush declared: “Today, as old political divisions disappear, other sources of tension--some ancient, some new--are emerging. National disputes persist. Abuses of minority and human rights continue. Where millions had once been denied the freedom to move, now millions feel compelled to move to escape economic or political hardship.

“We are witnessing in several countries the ugly resurgence of anti-Semitism and other ethnic, racial and religious intolerance,” Bush continued. “Bigotry and hatred have no place in civilized nations. Minorities enrich our societies. Protection of their rights is a prerequisite for stability.

“Europe is entering unknown waters.”

In her speech, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher declared: “We are entering a very volatile period in Europe.

“Now that democracy is returning to Eastern Europe, those national feelings are surfacing again as people regain pride in their own country.

“And with them are reappearing problems of minorities and of peoples and nations who have been divided or annexed as a result of the territorial changes of the 1930s and 1940s.

“These are matters which should be discussed in the CSCE, and its role in encouraging peaceful solutions to disputes which may arise should be expanded.”

This, Thatcher said, would be a better use of CSCE’s resources than encouraging it to become a defense alliance supplanting the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

Czechoslovak President Vaclav Havel warned that Eastern Europe has become a “hotbed of tension” and that Western European nations have an “obligation” to help their former Communist neighbors.

He called for a new European security system similar to NATO that could ensure peace and stability in the region.

Havel declared that the Warsaw Pact is “outdated, a remnant of the past” and said that East European nations will convene soon to “liquidate the military structure” of the East Bloc organization.

Even German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, chairman of the Monday session, warned in his welcoming address that Europe must not lapse into turmoil but “become a bedrock of peace and harmony, security and stability, culture and law, partnership and cooperation. In short, Europe must set a good example.”

European Commission President Jacques Delors suggested that Western Europe could alleviate some of the problems in emerging Eastern Europe by bringing those nations closer into a “Greater Europe” structure.