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Unfortunately, except as an example to the world, a U.S. ban will have scant practical effect. The Geneva conference offered little hope. Because of opposition by countries like Russia and China, which have stockpiled tens of millions of mines, the conference stopped well short of calling for an outright prohibition. "The Chinese have told us flat out that they'll give up nukes before they give up antipersonnel mines," says a senior State Department negotiator. But the conference did establish new guidelines, under which freshly laid mines must contain enough metal to be detected and would eventually self-destruct. There is a nine-year grace period--if grace is the word--before the new restrictions become mandatory.
That won't help the millions of people living in countries polluted by mines. Angola is one such nation, and Jo Fox, a Red Cross official based in South Africa, recently returned from Angola with graphic memories of the damage mines can do. "You see a woman working in the fields," she says, "trying to hoe her crops, and she has no legs. She is up to her waist in mud."
--Reported by Robert Kroon/Geneva, Andrew Purvis/Nairobi and Mark Thompson/Washington, with other bureaus