This volume concentrates on three main areas of current research in high energy physics: (1) multiparticle and diffractive production in perturbative and nonperturbative QCD, (2) confinement -- deconfinement mechanism and the RHIC physics, and (3) interface between high-energy collisions and cosmic-ray/astro-physics. The specific topics covered include: QCD at high energies, diffractive production, and small-x physics, multiparticle production and systematics: correlations and fluctuations, hadronic final states in e(+)e(-), lepton -- hadron and hadron -- hadron collisions, relativistic heavy...