After a brief review on the status of few--nucleon studies based on
conventional nuclear forces, we sketch the concepts of the effective field
theory approach constrained by chiral symmetry and its application to nuclear
forces. Then first results for few--nucleon observables are discussed.Comment: 8 pages, presented by W. Gloeckle at the International Symposium on
"A New Era of Nuclear Structure Physics", Kurokawa Village (Niigata Pref.),
Japan, Nov. 19-22, 200