Our ultimate goal is the construction of a model for interactions of two
nuclei in the energy range between several tens of GeV up to several TeV per
nucleon in the centre-of-mass system. Such nuclear collisions are very complex,
being composed of many components, and therefore some strategy is needed to
construct a reliable model. The central point of our approach is the
hypothesis, that the behavior of high energy interactions is universal
(universality hypothesis). So, for example, the hadronization of partons in
nuclear interactions follows the same rules as the one in electron-positron
annihilation; the radiation of off-shell partons in nuclear collisions is based
on the same principles as the one in deep inelastic scattering. We construct a
model for nuclear interactions in a modular fashion. The individual modules,
based on the universality hypothesis, are identified as building blocks for
more elementary interactions (like e^+ e^-, lepton-proton), and can therefore
be studied in a much simpler context. With these building blocks under control,
we can provide a quite reliable model for nucleus-nucleus scattering, providing
in particular very useful tests for the complicated numerical procedures using
Monte Carlo techniques.Comment: 10 pages, no figures; Proc. of the ``Workshop on Nuclear Matter in
Different Phases and Transitions'', Les Houches, France, March 31 - April 10,
199