"What Eastern Europe needs to do now is reduce nationalist tensions."

I think that in a time of tremendous interethnic and nationalist tension here, Gorbachev is clearly trying to appease a volatile constituency.

President Gorbachev, commenting here in a television interview, said Moldavia's nationalist tensions had become "an alarming situation."

Finally, establishing a new supranational community, as President Gorbachev and republic leaders proposed yesterday, could alleviate nationalist tensions.

This became part of his reputation as a sensitive politician for these times, which are so taken up with the resurgence of nationalist tensions and ambitions.

Despite the heavy losses from the earthquake, nationalist tensions remained high.

In 1992, because of growing nationalist tensions, Czechoslovakia was peacefully dissolved by parliament.

Any attempt to do so would merely hasten the explosion of nationalist tensions in republic after republic.

But the big question is how an expanded alliance can provide security in a region of ethnic and nationalist tensions.

The territorial dispute is a major source of nationalist tensions.