Staff writer

The Olympics, even during some of the darkest moments of the Cold War, offered an atmosphere of peaceful rivalry through sports that seems to be less significant with the end of the East-West confrontation.

But the peaceful coming-together of nations should still provide the global community with a message of peace, this time taking the opportunity to raise the issue of regional conflicts and the indiscriminate cruelty they inflict on innocent citizens. At today's opening ceremony of the Nagano Games, British land mine activist Christopher Moon will punctuate that point by being a final runner in the Olympic torch relay -- a run he must make on one false leg.

"I'm enormously grateful for the honor of being allowed to take part in the opening ceremony," Moon said in an interview with The Japan Times before the event. "It does give an opportunity to tell people the truth about what I have seen and the most appalling human suffering."

A former British army officer who became a mine-clearing expert, Moon, 35, lost an arm and a leg in 1993 while clearing mines in Mozambique as a member of Halo Trust, a British charity specializing in mine removal. When the mine detonated, he recalled, he thought he was back in Cambodia under mortar attack by the Khmer Rouge, because the explosion was so loud.

"When I looked at the ground and saw African grass, my mind raced," he said. "And I realized that it must have been a mine that had been missed by the metal detector. "Being blown up has not changed my own position toward mines at all, because I've always felt that it was fundamentally wrong to have such an indiscriminate weapon with a long-term effect, which is in the same category as dum dum bullets and poison gas," he said.

An avid runner, Moon did not wait long after receiving his artificial leg before taking up jogging again, ignoring the advice of his doctors. Seven months after the accident, Moon completed the London marathon with "his first leg," made of carbon fiber, in 5 hours and 39 minutes.

Having completed dozens of marathons and long-distance runs since -- including a seven-day, 230 km run across the Sahara Desert last April to raise funds for charity -- Moon said, "There's always this worst fear of failure, but I have to believe in myself, because nobody else would."

Philosophically describing his case as an occupational hazard, Moon points out that people living in developing countries that have been sown with mines have no choice. "In most cases, people would have died very, very quickly, probably within the first hour, from the injury I had," he said. And even if they're lucky enough to survive, being poor and disabled, their problems are just beginning, he added.

Calling for ratification of the Ottawa Treaty to ban mines and break this vicious cycle, Moon will set out Monday on a two-day, 130 km charity run, in coordination with the Association to Aid Refugees, Japan. They will run from Hakone, Kanagawa Prefecture, to Tokyo, stopping on the way at some 130 embassies. "We should try to be as civilized as possible, and what makes humanity civilized is basically laws," he said. "I strongly believe that part of the process of banning mines is about making the process of democracy work."