THE players - a Soviet dictator, an American president and Britain's wartime leader - are long dead. But the fateful deal they struck 50 years ago this month still casts a long shadow over Europe, where new conflicts and tensions have replaced the old division between East and West.
As Allied armies closed in on Berlin and prepared to crush Nazi Germany in February 1945, Soviet leader Josef Stalin, US President Franklin Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill met in the Black Sea resort of Yalta.
Their decisions shaped the future of Europe. It divided the continent into spheres of influence for the victorious allies and unwittingly laid the groundwork for the Cold War.
Now, half a century later, many of the same questions and some of the same fears that surfaced at Yalta have returned to haunt the troubled continent.
Zbigniew Brzezinski, national security adviser to former US president Jimmy Carter, noted the similarities and contrasts in a Washington speech earlier this month.
'Fifty years ago, Germany lay prostrate; today, Germany is the most powerful European nation. The situation is reversed now - with Russia, and the Soviet Union is no more,' he said.