Summit Leaders Proclaim a ‘New Era of Peace, Unity’ : Europe: The final declaration of the three-day Paris conference stresses democracy and human rights.

Leaders of the 34 nations charged with shaping a new political order in Europe concluded their historic three-day summit Wednesday with a ringing declaration of hope, proclaiming an end to “confrontation and division” and the dawn of “a new era of democracy, peace and unity.”

And, in the first small steps toward realizing those hopes, they created a series of permanent new mechanisms for fostering democracy and human rights, resolving potential conflicts and coping with such rising threats as ethnic and religious tensions, nuclear proliferation and environment pollution.

“We are closing a chapter in history--the Cold War is over,” President Bush said shortly before the closing ceremonies of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, which voted to meet again at the summit level sometime in 1992. Although he has often described the Cold War as ending, this was the first time Bush had flatly pronounced it dead.

French President Francois Mitterrand, harking back to the notorious agreement that divided Europe into Eastern and Western blocs at the end of World War II, said “Yalta came to be seen as a symbol of the separation of Europe into zones of influence, but Yalta is ended on this day in Paris.”

But in pledging to put aside old animosities, assist Eastern Europe’s already faltering young democracies and develop new ways to sustain the close relationship between the United States and Europe, the national leaders at the CSCE gathering tacitly acknowledged that the challenges ahead may equal the triumphs they celebrated.

“Ours is a time for fulfilling the hopes and expectations our people have cherished for decades,” the leaders’ final declaration, known as the Charter of Paris, said. “Steadfast commitment to democracy based on human rights and fundamental freedoms; prosperity through economic liberty and social justice; and equal security for all our countries.”

It will not be easy.

CSCE embraces all the nations of Europe except Albania, plus the United States and Canada. Western Europe, already economically advanced and politically stable, stands at the threshold of even greater prosperity. Much of Eastern Europe, along with the Soviet Union, is on the brink of economic and social catastrophe.

The resulting tensions constitute ominous threats to peace and stability, as some CSCE leaders bluntly declared on the summit’s final day.

“Our common future may be darkened by the sinister clouds of the resurging conflicts of bygone days unless the split into a rich and a poor Europe, a Class A and a Class B Europe, is overcome,” Polish Prime Minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki warned.

Agreed Chancellor Franz Vranitzky of Vienna, “We have not guaranteed ourselves a great future just by overcoming the division of Europe.”

Among the new mechanisms established to grapple with the problems ahead were:

A CSCE secretariat, to be headquartered in Prague, the Czechoslovak capital, to handle the ongoing business of the conference and give a measure of permanence to a body that, until now, has had no permanent staff or even a mailing address.

A Council of Foreign Ministers, to meet at least annually, to address issues affecting CSCE members.

A Conflict Resolution Center, to be set up in Vienna, to reduce the likelihood of confrontations by setting up a communications network for dealing with potential problems and exchanging information among members about military activities that might arouse concern.

An Office of Free Elections, to be located in Warsaw, with a small staff to facilitate contacts and the exchange of information on elections among member states.

A parliamentary assembly, which will at first consist of legislators from the participating states, who will meet to discuss furthering the organization’s goals.

These mechanisms, which members acknowledged to be modest, could be developed into a far-reaching framework for managing the affairs of a unified Europe.

Whether they will be or not remains to be seen. The relationship between CSCE and the economic union of the European Community, for example, has not yet been worked out.

And the United States has been concerned that CSCE, which embraces the full range of European states and--as now constituted--can act only by unanimous consent, might become an unwieldy and indecisive substitute for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

Some European leaders, however, consider the NATO military alliance all but obsolete now that the Soviet threat is collapsing. And some even question the future of U.S. involvement in Europe’s affairs.

On that point, the final declaration said:

“The participation of both North American and European states is a fundamental characteristic of the CSCE; it underlies its past achievements and is essential to the future of the CSCE process.

“An abiding adherence to shared values and our common heritage are the ties which bind us together,” the declaration added. “With all the rich diversity of our nations, we are united in our commitment to expand our cooperation in all fields.”

Confronted with an immediate threat of military conflict, however, CSCE members sidestepped a U.S. request to issue a statement of support for the international effort that has opposed Iraq’s Saddam Hussein since his troops invaded Kuwait Aug. 2. Bush likewise was disappointed when he failed to get Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s support for a new U.N. resolution authorizing the use of military force against Iraq.

The final CSCE document contained no reference to the Persian Gulf crisis, although that situation’s potential economic impact on Europe is more immediate and severe than on the United States.

Immediately after the close of the conference Wednesday, Bush left for the Persian Gulf to meet American troops and confer with Arab leaders.

Mitterrand, in his final remarks, conceded that the summit agreement did not free Europe of “tensions,” but he said that the summit had set up “machinery to prevent sparks from setting the powder on fire.”

The Charter of Paris, bound in red leather, was signed in turn by Presidents Bush, Mitterrand and Gorbachev, German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, Czechoslovak President Vaclav Havel, the Vatican secretary of state, Cardinal Agostino Casaroli, and the rest of the leaders sitting around the huge table in Paris.

Instead of dealing with such specifics as the gulf crisis, the declaration expressed the group’s general commitment to democratic elections, human rights and--a first-time reference to socialist countries in this context--economic prosperity through free-market mechanisms.

“The success of the transition to market economy by countries making efforts to this effect is important and in the interest of us all,” said the charter--in effect pointing former Communist states hobbled by planned economies toward the free-enterpise system.

“Europe is liberating itself from the legacy of the past,” said the charter, ending a conference that began Monday with the signing of the most sweeping European conventional arms control treaty in history, which sharply reduced armaments from the Atlantic Ocean to the Ural Mountains.

The summit approved new talks on reducing military personnel and armaments in Europe in follow-up talks in Vienna.

It also approved the treaty that unified Germany in September, in effect putting all of Europe’s imprimatur on the new boundaries of the German Republic.