CLINTON SAYS HE REGRETS NOT BEING MORE AGGRESSIVE IN FIGHTING AIDS

BARCELONA, Spain - Former President Bill Clinton said at an international
AIDS conference Thursday night that he regretted not having done more about
AIDS while he was in office.

Clinton said he had erred in failing to support funding for needle exchange
programs to prevent the spread of the virus among injecting drug users.

In an interview after a session of the 14th International AIDS Conference
in Barcelona, Clinton also urged leaders in hard-hit Africa, the Caribbean
and Asia to speak out forcefully and develop plans to stop the spread of
the disease.

He said that although many political leaders had been afraid to take a
strong stand on AIDS, "not a single one of them will be defeated for doing
the right thing."

Clinton said that since leaving office, he had kept quiet on AIDS for
personal and policy reasons. But now, he said, he has decided the time is
right to speak out.

"I had young friends who died in their 20s," Clinton said. "I don't want
kids to die."

He called AIDS an economic, security and humanitarian issue for which the
United States should pay its fair share. He added, "That requires us to go
from $800 million a year now to $2.5 billion, which is a couple of months
of the Afghan war."

He applauded Sen. Jesse Helms, R-N.C., for ending his opposition to AIDS
expenditures and urging the United States to invest $500 million a year in
battling the disease.

Clinton said, "If people are given the facts, they will do the right thing,
because they do not want to see their children die."

The former president stressed the need for each country to develop "a plan
that says, 'Here is what we are doing, and here is what we need from the
rest of the world.'" Further spread of the disease, he said, could lead to
more ethnic clashes and destabilize democracies in Africa.

He foresaw a similar possibility in parts of the former Soviet Union.
There, he said, a worsening AIDS epidemic could lead countries to "become
even more dominated by narco-traffickers and organized criminals."

Asked about what he had done to fight AIDS as president, Clinton said, "Do
I wish I could have done more? Yes - but I do not know that I could have
done it."

In particular, he cited his stance on needle exchange programs. In 1998,
his administration decided against lifting a long-standing ban on federal
financing for programs to distribute clean needles to drug addicts.

"I think I was wrong about that," Clinton said. "I should have tried harder
to do that."

At the time, Clinton's advisers said they feared a political disaster for
him if he lifted the ban. They also feared that Republicans might push
through legislation stripping federal money from groups that provided free
needles.

On Thursday, Clinton said he had ultimately been swayed against the needle
program by Gen. Barry McCaffrey, who served as director of national drug
policy in his administration.

He added, "There have been several studies now, all of which indicate that
a needle exchange program does not increase drug use."

Clinton also took the occasion to applaud the 12 Caribbean countries for
signing an initiative to buy AIDS drugs at a lower price than they could
have individually. If the Caribbean plan succeeds, he said, it should be
tried in the former Soviet Union.