U.N. asks for accord at AIDS conference

Published Friday, June 2, 2006

UNITED NATIONS (AP) - Warning that the battle against AIDS was at risk, the United Nations asked delegations at a major conference yesterday to stop opposing the mention of condoms, safe drug use and funding goals in a document that will help guide efforts to fight the virus over the next 10 years.

Yet governments still disagreed strongly on some of those issues and others including drug patents, empowering girls and exact financial targets. That led some activists to express fears that the High-Level Meeting on AIDS, which ends today, could actually hinder the struggle against the virus 25 years after it was discovered.

Some civil society groups accused negotiators of trying to water down or renege on promises made before on AIDS prevention, treatment and funding, including in a General Assembly meeting in 2001.

"After five years we come and we are still reviewing the same declaration. It’s not an outcome," said Violeta Ross of the International Community of Women Living With HIV/AIDS.

"Something has to happen, a click, to get out of declarations and into actions," she said.

U.N. General Assembly President Jan Eliasson intervened with a proposal meant to jump-start the discussions, which must wrap up by the time the meeting ends today.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan later met with several HIV-positive activists who urged him to make sure the event wasn’t a waste.

"They were concerned that we may be rolling back the gains which were made in the declaration in 2001," Annan said. "One of them pleaded, ‘Please don’t kill us with diplomacy. Come up with real proposals that will help us on the ground.’ "

The meeting in New York comes after the UNAIDS office released a report saying that some 40 million people worldwide are living with HIV/AIDS and some 25 million have been killed by it.

The report also said that the world has failed to meet many of the goals set out in 2001. For example, only 9 percent of pregnant women in poor countries are receiving services to help prevent mother-to-child transmission, despite a UNAIDS goal of 80 percent coverage.

U.N. officials and aid groups had hoped that this week’s meeting would propose a detailed plan on the goal of bringing universal access to HIV/AIDS treatment to all those who want it by 2010.

But in early negotiations, government delegations resumed old battles that have raged for years and are largely unrelated to that target.

Some Islamic nations were resisting efforts to say that girls should be empowered to fight AIDS. Other conservative governments wanted to strike mention of "vulnerable groups" - which refers to sex workers, intravenous drug users and gay men - as well as male and female condoms.