- (AFP) -- UN Secretary General Kofi Annan's special envoy
blasted as a "grotesque obscenity" the money lavished on the
US-led war on terror given the relative pittance spent on Africa's AIDS
orphans and HIV-infected millions.
-
- "Millions of children live traumatised, unstable
lives, robbed not just of their parents, but of their childhoods and futures,"
Stephen Lewis, who is Annan's representative for AIDS in Africa, told the
opening of a major conference here.
-
- "How can this be happening, in the year 2003, when
we can find over 200 billion dollars to fight a war on terrorism, but we
can't find the money to prevent children from living in terror? And when
we can't find the money to provide the antiretroviral treatment for all
of those who need such treatment in Africa?
-
- "This double standard is the grotesque obscenity
of the modern world."
-
- Lewis did not mention the United States by name or give
details for the 200-billion-dollar figure.
-
- Earlier, the specialist UN agency UNAIDS said spending
on the AIDS war in Africa was at last rising relatively fast, amounting
to around 900-950 million dollars for 2002.
-
- "It's half of what we need to confront this epidemic
in the continent, but it's already a doubling of what we had a few years
ago," Michel Sidibe, a director at the UN's AIDS agency who is in
charge of country and regional support.
-
- Sidibe said it was time to smash the myth that Africa
was an unsalvageable basket case.
-
- In addition to money inflows from the Global Fund and
others, the price of drugs was falling and African governments were working
to combat stigma and encourage HIV prevention, he said.
-
- The six-day International Conference on AIDS and Sexually
Transmitted Infections in Africa (ICASA) is a forum held every two years
that focusses on specifically African aspects of the pandemic.
-
- Some 8,000 doctors, researchers, policymakers and grassroots
campaigners were registered for the meeting.
-
- Today, around 30 million Africans have AIDS or HIV, accounting
for around three-quarters of the world's total. Some 15 million Africans
have already died, and 11 million children have lost one or both parents
to the disease.
-
- From the Sahara to the Cape, one adult in 11 has the
human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) on average.
-
- Yet, at the end of last year, only 50,000 people had
access to antiretroviral therapy, the drug "cocktail" that has
made HIV a manageable condition for millions of people in the West.
-
- The good news is that the cost of antiretrovirals in
developing countries has fallen dramatically, thanks to price cuts by big
pharmaceutical companies.
-
- And it is expected to slide further, thanks to a World
Trade Organisation (WTO) agreement in which poor, vulnerable countries
will be able to import cheap generic copies of patented medication under
a "compulsory licensing system."
-
- The great priority now, said delegates at the Nairobi
conference, is how to to distribute them -- quickly, fairly and in ways
that ensure that they are not abused and resistance to the drugs develops.
-
- Sidibe sounded the alarm for southern and eastern Africa,
warning that the AIDS crisis was locking countries there into a vicious
circle.
-
- Economic costs and social tensions were being dangerously
amplified by growing numbers of orphans, open to exploitation; food shortages
in southern Africa had accelerating the demise of people with HIV; and
in some countries as many as half of the police and military had the virus.
-
- "This new crisis ... is reducing the productivity,
is changing completely the pyramid of population," he said.
-
- "It is influencing the whole capacity of the state
to continue to play its normal function by providing basic services to
the people. Schooling is collapsing. The security foundation is completely
undermined," he said.
-
-
-
- Copyright © 2002 AFP. All rights reserved. All information
displayed in this section (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected
by intellectual property rights owned by Agence France-Presse. As a consequence
you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any
way commercially exploit any of the contents of this section without the
prior written consent of Agence France-Presses.
- her highlighting the security turmoil under US occupation.
-
- As Britain sought to galvanise European support on how
to rebuild Iraq, a senior Iraqi council delegation left for New York to
attend a key UN General Assembly meeting, which starts Tuesday.
-
- Iraq's interim finance minister, meanwhile, announced
a sweeping package of economic reforms to liberalise his country and said
that he hoped to win pledges of around 70 billion dollars (61.5 billion
euros) in aid at a donor conference next month.
-
- The killing of the three soldiers, which happened on
Saturday, was a new sign that the security situation in the war-ravaged
country remains dire.
-
- One of them died in Ramadi, 110 kilometres (70 miles)
west of Baghdad, when a military vehicle was hit with an "improvised
explosive device," an army statement said.
-
- Earlier, a US military spokesman said a mortar attack
on Abu Gharib prison, some 20 kilometres (12 miles) west of Baghdad, had
killed two soldiers and wounded 13 others.
-
- Eighty-two US soldiers have now died in attacks in Iraq
since May 1, when US President George W. Bush said major combat operations
after the removal of president Saddam Hussein were over.
-
- The US military headquarters in the northern city of
Mosul also came under fire Sunday when it was targetted by mortars, according
to witnesses, who were unable to specify if there were any casualties.
-
- The latest incidents came after Iraqi Governing Council
member Akila al-Hashimi was shot several times on Saturday near her western
Baghdad home.
-
- The condition of the former member of Saddam's ousted
Baath Party is still critical but has been improving after she was stabilised
by another operation overnight, officials said.
-
- At least one suspect was arrested for the attack -- the
first on the US-installed administration since Saddam's regime fell in
April.
-
- The shooting followed a surge in anti-US attacks since
the release of a new message, purportedly by Saddam, issuing a call to
arms against the occupiers.
-
- Governing Council chairman Ahmad Chalabi blamed "Saddam's
assassins" for the attack on Hashimi, who he said had faced repeated
threats.
-
- "We firmly believe that the criminals were remnants
of the Baathist regime and Saddam's assassins," he said.
-
- Paul Bremer, Washington's top man in Iraq, led condemnation
of the shooting, branding it a cowardly act that would not derail reconstruction
efforts.
-
- Iran's foreign ministry on Sunday also condemned the
attack, calling it a "painful and regrettable incident" but one
that "proves yet again that the US is incapable of assuring security
in Iraq."
-
- Council members on a visit to the United States however
said that foreign extremists could have been behind the assassination attempt.
-
- Songkul Capuk, another female council member, said she
was certain Hashimi was the target of foreign killers but insisted the
attack would not halt the work of the US-named interim authority.
-
- In Dubai meanwhile, Iraqi finance minister Kamel al-Kilani
announced a massive economic reform package to open his country up to foreign
investment, allowing 100-percent foreign ownership in all sectors except
natural resources, a harbinger of large-scale privatization to come.
-
- "The measures will be implemented in the near future
and represent important steps in advancing Iraq's reconstruction effort,"
Kilani said in a statement released by the US delegation to the International
Monetary Fund meetings in Dubai.
-
- A meeting of the Group of Seven (G7) most industrialised
nations also vowed in the Gulf Arab state to "seek a solution"
to Iraq's massive debt by the end of 2004.
-
- Kilani met US Treasury Secretary John Snow in Dubai Sunday.
-
- Snow described the reform programme as "a very promising
set of policies" and dismissed suggestions that the reforms were being
imposed on Iraq by Washington.
-
- Kilani also told AFP that his government hoped to get
financial commitments of around 70 billion dollars from donors at a key
aid conference in Madrid on October 23-24.
-
- "We hope it's going to be around 70, 75... it could
be 65 billion dollars, depending on the negotiations," he said. "This
will be for the reconstruction of Iraq over the next few years, four or
five years, but we have to move swiftly."
-
- In London, British Prime Minister Tony Blair hosted Spanish
counterpart Jose Maria Aznar as he pursued efforts to garner broad international
support on rebuilding Iraq.
-
- In Berlin on Saturday, Blair, French President Jacques
Chirac and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder called for a rapid transfer
of power in Iraq and a central role for the UN after summit talks.
-
- The trilateral talks, the first in two years, were meant
to heal Europe's diplomatic wounds and find common ground on stabilising
Iraq ahead of talks Bush will hold with Chirac and Schroeder on Tuesday
and Wednesday on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly.
-
- At stake is a UN resolution that would help Washington
by approving a multinational force for Iraq and sharing the financial costs
of rebuilding, more than five months after the fall of Saddam's regime.
-
-
-
-
- Copyright © 2002 AFP. All rights reserved. All information
displayed in this section (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected
by intellectual property rights owned by Agence France-Presse. As a consequence
you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any
way commercially exploit any of the contents of this section without the
prior written consent of Agence France-Presses.
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