The local tree-width of a graph G=(V,E) is the function ltw^G: N -> N that
associates with every natural number r the maximal tree-width of an
r-neighborhood in G. Our main graph theoretic result is a decomposition theorem
for graphs with excluded minors that essentially says that such graphs can be
decomposed into trees of graphs of bounded local tree-width.
As an application of this theorem, we show that a number of combinatorial
optimization problems, such as Minimum Vertex Cover, Minimum Dominating Set,
and Maximum Independent Set have a polynomial time approximation scheme when
restricted to a class of graphs with an excluded minor