United Nations -- A group of people in rural central Pennsylvania, several hundred miles away from UN headquarters in New York City, have "adopted" a minefield in Mozambique pledging to raise the thousands of dollars necessary to rid a particular patch of African soil from the devastating anti-personnel landmines so that Mozambicans can once again use that land.

The Pennsylvania group is one of six groups around the United States that have joined a powerful new program initiated by the United Nations Association of the USA (UNA-USA) -- "Adopt-a-Minefield."

UNA-USA officially launched the program at its annual national conferenceg March 9 in New York. However UNA-USA officials had already begun visiting communities across the United States and working with another private organization, The Humpty Dumpty Institute, to explain the unique program which gives individuals, communities, and businesses a means of helping eliminate the tens of millions of mines that every year maim or kill about 26,000 civilians, almost half of whom are children.

Oren Schlein of UNA-USA said that the program is "our response to the pervasive threat of landmines, a vehicle by which we hope to encourage millions of people across the U.S. and overseas to directly participate in the resolution of this global threat."

UNA-USA already has six formal adoptions totaling $200,000, Schlein said. "This money is currently being raised and we expect a first tranche of money to be forwarded to the UN this year."

UNA-USA also has distributed materials to 200 organizations across the country and several are currently fundraising with the intention of adopting a minefield of their own, he added.

"The key to the program's success lies in our ability to personalize the issue...educate the public about the global landmine crisis, help create relationships between mine-affected communities and sponsoring communities, contributors and patrons," Schlein said.

Working under an exclusive agreement with the United Nations, UNA-USA will look for sponsors to adopt active minefields. The sponsors will raise the needed funds in their communities to clear the minefield they select from UNA-USA's "catalogue." The money raised is deposited into a special UNA-USA account and then forwarded to the United Nations for the mine clearance tasks. Cost of the projects range from several thousand dollars to millions depending on the size, location, and complexities of the operation.

The "Adopt-a-Minefield" catalogue includes a short background on the country and the scope of the landmine problem and then lists several projects that can be "adopted." For example, listed in Bosnia and Herzegovina is a small project in Maglaj Cobe School which will take four weeks, require one manual team, and costs $47,000. A large Bosnian project listed is the Brcko Ulovic Road which will take 16 weeks, require one manual team, and cost $231,000.

UNA-USA will also pool the resources of smaller donors so contributions can be as small as $25.

Assistant UN Secretary General in the Department of Peacekeeping Operations Young-Jin Choi said that the program "symbolizes the enterprising spirit and individual initiatives of the American people."

"This says to those who suffer: We are with you. We see and understand your problems, your safety and we want you to know that you can count on our support and help," Choi said.

"The effect of this message should not be underestimated. The 'Adopt-a-Minefield' project is a great, great gift to our common cause...How very grateful we are to you," the UN official said.

The United States government is a strong supporter of the program and will be helping promote the program around the U.S. and the world. U.S. officials said the "Adopt-a-Minefield" program is a prime example of the public-private partnership envisioned by President Clinton when he initiated the U.S. Demining 2010 Initiative, the U.S. effort to help remove the threat of landmines to civilians by the year 2010.

During the hour-long session launching the program March 9 Ambassador Donald Steinberg, U.S. Special Representative to The President and Secretary of State for Global Humanitarian Demining, announced that the United States will be contributing $140,000 in 1999 as "a down payment" for "Adopt-a-Minefield" and hopes to "have additional resources available in future" for the program.

Steinberg said that "no program can be more important" than the "Adopt-a-Minefield" program. Traveling around the country to promote the U.S. Demining 2010 Initiative, the ambassador said he found universal acceptance to the program's approach.

"Not only are individuals responding with humanitarian instinct, but we have school administrators, church leaders, corporate executives, musicians, even professional football players who are understanding the capacity of this issue to draw Americans into a deeper appreciation of international realities," Steinberg said.

"Los Angeles city schools are viewing this program as a crucial link between the Los Angeles school children and school children in mined countries, especially in Central America and Southeast Asia where many of the children come from. They view this as a means of introducing a larger reality and this is a vital first step," he said.

From 1995 to 1998 Steinberg was U.S. ambassador to Angola, a country which is high on the list of the countries most affected by landmines. He talked of the devastation that he saw in the country and added that similar tragedies have also been part of everyday life for more than a decade in other African countries such as Ethiopia, Mozambique, Rwanda, and Burundi.

In a clinic for mine victims in Angola, the ambassador said "we...looked on the operating table and there was a women who had her leg blown off and was giving birth at the same time. This woman, we later found out, had been seven months pregnant. She was starving to death."

"She knew that the mango grove with the ripe mangoes had been mined but she had to make a choice whether to allow her unborn baby to starve or to risk going in there," he said. "She went in, she stepped on a mine. The doctor told us that it was very unlikely that either she or her baby would survive."

"No one can see something like that and not recognize the terror and horror of these weapons," Steinberg said.

International experts, diplomats and world leaders have called the global landmine crisis one of the most pervasive problems facing the world today. It is estimated that there are about 70 million landmines in 70 countries worldwide. While the mines cost as little as $3 to make and are easy to use, each one costs between $300 and $1,000 to remove. In many places they are being deployed at a faster rate than they are being removed from the ground.

Traditionally used for military defense purposes, the mines are now more often used as offensive weapons against civilians to disrupt and displace communities and render agricultural land useless. Their purpose is to inflict maximum harm on victims and create political and economic chaos in war-torn countries.

"In Angola there are 80,000 who have lost limbs to landmines. There are literally hundreds of thousands of people who have been driven from their homes by these weapons. And there are millions -- indeed, the whole country -- who have suffered the economic and environmental and humanitarian degradation of these weapons. And many other countries have experienced similar situations," Steinberg said.

Steinberg also accompanied a group from UNA-USA and the Humpty Dumpty Institute who visited Angola to produce a film which will be shown to groups as part of the "Adopt-a-Minefield" campaign.

The group "stood in the minefields...a few yards away from deminers as they worked...we sat on the floor of schoolhouses and watched teachers training children to avoid mines, visited survivor rehabilitation centers," he said.

"The message that needs to be communicated is that this is an issue that can be addressed....this is a man-made problem and it has a man-made solution," Steinberg said.

He stressed that the humanitarian demining programs, which are coordinated by the United Nations, have been successful. In Cambodia in 1990 there were 500 landmine victims a month, today there are 50 victims a month and as the program continues it is expected that in five year there will be no victims.

In Afghanistan international community programs have helped clear tens of thousands of hectares back to fertile lands, the ambassador noted. In Mozambique the demining of 6,000 kilometers of roads has helped hundreds of thousands of Mozambicans return to their homes.

The "Adopt-a-Minefield" program is "a practical step to address what is a global tragedy," Steinberg said. "The presence of 70 million landmines planted in some 70 countries around the world pose not only a humanitarian crisis to the 26,000 victims who are involved in accidents each year, but they represent a clear and present barrier to national reconciliation and peace building in countries who are trying to emerge from conflict.

The mines "are an obstacle to the return of millions of refugees and displaced (persons) to their homes and they are a challenge to the economic recovery and sustainability of development," the ambassador said.