  Two giants of the Sagittarius dwarf spheroidal have been observed with the
UVES spectrograph on the ESO 8.2m Kueyen telescope, during the commissioning of
the instrument. Sgr 139 has [Fe/H]=-0.28 and Sgr 143 [Fe/H]=-0.21, these values
are considerably higher than photometric estimates of the metallicity of the
main population of Sgr. We derived abundances for O, Na, Mg, Al, Si, Ca, Sc,
Ti, V, Cr, Mn, Co, Ni, Cu, Y, Ba, La, Ce, Nd and Eu; the abundance ratios found
are essentially solar with a few exceptions: Na shows a strong overdeficiency,
the heavy elements Ba to Eu, are overabundant, while Y is underabundat. The
high metallicity derived implies that the Sgr galaxy has experienced a high
level of chemical processing. The stars had been selected to be representative
of the two main stellar populations of Sagittarius, however, contrary to what
expected from the photometry, the two stars show a very similar chemical
composition. We argue that the most likely explanation for the difference in
the photometry of the two stars is a different distance, Sgr 143 being about
2Kpc nearer than Sgr 139. This result suggests that the interpretation of
colour -- magnitude diagrams of Sgr is more complex than previously thought and
the effect of the line of sight depth should not be neglected. It also shows
that spectroscopic abundances are required for a correct interpretation of Sgr
populations.
