The nucleon--nucleon interaction is studied in the Tuebingen Chiral Quark model. The quark--quark hamiltonian includes, in addition to a quadratic confinement potential and the usual one-gluon exchange, pion and sigma exchanges between quarks generated by chiral symmetry breaking. An expansion up to second order in v/c is used. The requirement of chiral symmetry reduces the number of free parameters in the model. The \sigma meson is exchanged between quarks and not as in earlier versions between nucleons. Within the model the nucleon-nucleon phase shifts and the deuteron properties are studied. The longitudinal and transversal form factors form factors of the deuteron are calculated in this microscopic meson--quark cluster model.

PACS numbers: 21.30.Cb, 21.30.Fe