WASHINGTON, February 5. /TASS/. Former chief of US diplomacy Henry Kissinger has called for developing a new "strategic concept" for the US-Russian relations "within which the points of contention may be managed."

A major American political thinker, Kissinger, 92, who was the 56th US Secretary of State from 1973 to 1977, unveiled the proposal in a commentary published on Thursday by the National Interest magazine after his visit to Moscow and talks with President Vladimir Putin earlier this week.

Kissinger, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, said the current US-Russian relations "are probably the worst they have been since before the end of the Cold War." "Mutual trust has been dissipated on both sides. Confrontation has replaced cooperation," the US diplomat wrote.

"Many commentators, both Russian and American, have rejected the possibility of the US and Russia working cooperatively on a new international order. In their view, the United States and Russia have entered a new Cold War," he said.

The legendary politician, who initiated the policy of "detente" in relations between the US and the USSR, stressed that the bilateral dialogue must focus on shared future rather than on elaborating conflict.

Kissinger said the danger today is "less a return to military confrontation than the consolidation of a self-fulfilling prophecy in both countries." "The long-term interests of both countries call for a world that transforms the contemporary turbulence and flux into a new equilibrium which is increasingly multipolar and globalized."

Today threats more frequently arise from the disintegration of state power and "the growing number of ungoverned territories," rather than from the accumulation of power, he wrote.

"This spreading power vacuum cannot be dealt with by any state, no matter how powerful, on an exclusively national basis. It requires sustained cooperation between the United States and Russia, and other major powers," he said.