Ms. Williams seized the occasion to critique the do-nothingism of President Clinton who remains strongly opposed to an international treaty that was signed last month by over one hundred nations. That agreement, reached as a result of grassroots organizing that led to a nearly successful conclusion, is being hailed as an exciting new form of post-cold war citizen political action. The International Campaign to Ban Lands Mines worked without assistance from established institutions such as the United Nations.

The American President said his spokesperson Michael D. McCurry, is "rock solid" in his opposition to the new treaty, which the U.S. refused to sign. Begging exclusive amendments to it that would allow 19 more years of mining along South Korea's northern borders, and the use of anti-personnel mines in conjunction with anti-tank mines, the U.S. and China found themselves courting major disagreements with almost every other nation, including Russia which has belatedly agreed to sign the treaty.

Ms. Williams, a 47-year old 1960s Vietnam War protester, headed up a coalition of more than 1,000 organizations in over sixty nations opposing the fact that over a hundred million buried mines take lives or maim 26,000 innocents annually.

The campaign is a direct descendent of the 60s anti-war protest, according to its founders, including Robert Muller, a Marine veteran who lost use of his legs in Vietnam and thereafter campaigned to improve sordid conditions in American veterans hospitals where he'd been treated.

In the 1980s Muller went to Vietnam where he worked to fit wounded Vietnamese veterans with prosthetics. In a later visit to Cambodia—in 1991—he discovered that land mine victims were mostly civilians.

This revelation found him saying, "There's more we've got to do. Just putting on legs don't cut it."

Described as barefooted and bare-knuckled in her approach, Jody Williams greeted reporters at her Putney, Vermont home after winning the Nobel Prize. She suggested that those supporting her cause might take to calling the American president "a coward" if he continued to refuse signing the anti-land-mine treaty.

"If President Clinton wants the legacy of his administration to be that he did not have the courage to be the Commander and Chief of his military, that is his legacy, and I feel sorry for him," she announced. "I think that it's tragic that President Clinton does not want to be on the side of humanity."

Russia's President, Boris N. Yeltsin, only a few hours following the announcement of the Nobel Peace award, changed his country's position and announced that Russia would join forces with other peace-loving nations.