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We study the nucleon-nucleon (NN) problem as a six-quark system in a nonrelativistic chiral constituent quark model where the Hamiltonian contains a linear confinement and a pseudoscalar meson (Goldstone boson) exchange interaction between the quarks. This interaction has a long range Yukawa-type part, depending on the mass of the exchanged meson and a short range part, mainly responsible for the good description of the baryon spectra. We calculate the NN potential in the adiabatic approximation as a function of Z, the separation distance between the centres of the two three-quark clusters. The orbital part of the six-quark states is constructed either from the usual cluster model states or from molecular orbital single particle states. The latter are more realistic, having proper axially and reflectionally symmetries. In both cases the potential presents an important hard core at short distances, explained through the dominance of the [51][sub FS] configuration. However in the molecular orbital basis the core is less repulsive, as a consequence of the fact that this basis gives a better upper bound for the energy of the six-quark system. We calculate the potential for the [sup 3]S[sub 1] and [sup 3]S[sub 0] channels with two different parametrizations. We find a small (few MeV) attractive pocket for one of these parametrizations. A middle range attraction is simulated by the addition of a σ-meson exchange interaction between quarks, of a form similar to that of the pseudoscalar meson exchange. The present study is an intermediate, useful step towards dynamical calculations based on the resonating group method. © 2000 American Institute of Physics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]