  We investigate the properties of nonlinear excitations in different types of
soliton bearing systems with long-range dispersive interaction. We show that
length-scale competition in such systems universally results in a
multi-component structure of nonlinear excitations and can lead to a new type
of multistability: coexistence of different nonlinear excitations at the same
value of the spectral parameter (i.e., velocity in the case of anharmonic
lattices or frequency in nonlinear Schroedinger models).
