  We give a formula for the universal R-matrix of the quantized universal
enveloping algebra $U_q(\g).$ This is similar to a previous formula due to
Kirillov-Reshetikhin and Levendorskii-Soibelman, except that where they use the
action of the braid group element $T_{w_0}$ on each representation, we show
that one can instead use a system of weight preserving endomorphisms. One
advantage of our construction is that it is well defined for all symmetrizable
Kac-Moody algebras. However we have only established that the result in equal
to the universal R-matrix in finite type.

Representation Theory;Quantum Algebra