Stuck in the traffic on Capitol Hill.

What results when the campaign against conflict diamonds gets caught between a lame-duck president and a congress that wants to get home before Election Day?

Several months earlier, few would have thought that Election Day in the United Stats would have been a factor in the industry-wide effort to halt the flow of conflict diamonds into market. But that's just what happened, when a lame-duck president and a legislature, who do not know who will be in control at the White House and the Capitol in 2001, stalled legislation that cuts to the very core of the anti-conflict