LAND MINES STILL POSE INTERNATIONAL THREAT

While in Vietnam, President Clinton vowed this nation's support "until you have found every land mine and every piece of unexploded ordnance. This is the tragedy of war for which peace produces no answer."

Part of the answer lies in an international treaty, dating back to 1977, outlawing land mines. Both the United States and Vietnam have refused to sign the treaty. The U.S. reason is that land mines play an important role in warfare, and the Korean Peninsula is peppered with so many mines that no one dares cross the mined no-man's-land dividing North Korea from South Korea.

But other examples of peacetime killing and maiming, particularly of children, abound.

If the land-mine treaty is defective because it doesn't allow for the practical uses of mines in certain situations, it could be amended to account for mines shaped like children's toys. Or it could require that all land mines be manufactured with built-in defusing systems that would make mined areas safe again after a period of time.

While Clinton pledges to help Hanoi with its land-mine problem, the president should also be pushing his own negotiators toward an acceptable version of the land-mine treaty.