ANNAN BELIEVES THE WORLD IS LOSING FIGHT AGAINST HIV

U.N. Secretary General Urges Countries To 'Step Up' Before It's Too Late

UNITED NATIONS -- On the final day of a special session on the fight
against HIV and AIDS, U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan delivered a
gloomy assessment, saying the world was losing the battle.

"The epidemic continues to outpace us," he told a jam-packed session
of the General Assembly on Friday. "There are more new infections
than ever before; more deaths than ever before; more women and girls
infected than ever before."

Annan, who is from Ghana and has made fighting HIV a priority of his
tenure, acknowledged some areas of progress since the last U.N.
special session on AIDS in 2001: seven times as many people around
the world now have access to treatment, he said, and in some African
nations, the rate of infection is declining.

But he said that if countries "don't step up the fight drastically,"
the world would not be able to "reverse the tide."

The United Nations is expected to adopt a new action plan at the
close of the conference this afternoon.

The dark tone of Annan's remarks diverged markedly from the upbeat
speeches by world leaders at the start of the three-day session
Wednesday, and from the positive speech given immediately before his
remarks by Laura Bush, the first lady.

"This is a hopeful moment in the fight against AIDS," Mrs. Bush
began. She noted that the administration of her husband, President
Bush, began a program in 2003 to contribute a total of $15 billion
over five years to the international fight against AIDS.

"The American people are on track to meet or exceed that commitment," she said.

Not enough, Annan -- the next speaker -- seemed to say, as Mrs. Bush
listened from the front row. "This fight requires every president,
every parliamentarian to say, 'AIDS stops with me,'" he said.

The United States, the host country for the special session, has been
roundly criticized by AIDS activists around the world for dispatching
Mrs. Bush as its representative at the session, rather than a senior
administration official. France and Brazil sent their foreign
ministers, for example, and many African presidents are in attendance.

Mrs. Bush's five-minute speech steered away from many of the
criticisms that have been leveled against the United States'
international AIDS policy, most notably that it seeks to promote
sexual abstinence rather than scientifically proven approaches to
stemming the spread of the virus, particularly condom use.

"The U.S. funds abstinence or abstinence-until-marriage
Advertisementprograms that are ideologically driven and have nothing
to do with reality," said Jodi Jacobson, president of the Center for
Health and Gender Equality, an American advocacy group.

"In a lot of places, teenagers are sexually active and married women
are getting infected from their husbands."

Jacobson noted at this week's session, American delegates pushed for
the removal of phrases like "sex workers" or "men who have sex with
men" from conference documents, preferring to refer to "vulnerable
groups" instead.

The United States has sided with Syria and Yemen in refusing to talk
about "the empowerment of girls," she said.

Mrs. Bush did not address such controversies.

She made passing reference to the official U.N. program for AIDS
prevention -- known as ABC, short for Abstinence, Be-Faithful, and
Condom use -- by noting that "Africa's ABC model has led to dramatic
declines in HIV" in some countries.

Mrs. Bush also suggested the creation of an international HIV testing
day, and spoke of the way that wider availability of anti-AIDS drugs
allowed people with HIV "a second chance at life."

But the three U.N. officials who spoke after Mrs. Bush, including
Annan, said that far too few people in Africa had access to such
drugs, and the U.N. was desperately short of the money needed to
improve the situation.

The Global Fund to Fight AIDS Tuberculosis and Malaria, a war chest
of money created after the 2001 conference, has helped more than
500,000 people to receive lifesaving cocktails of antiviral drugs, a
number that has grown by 40 percent in the last six months.

But the World Health Organization estimates as few as one in six
people infected with HIV are able to get such drugs, because of the high cost.

The U.N. estimates it needs $18 billion to combat AIDS in 2007 and
$22 billion in 2008. At present, it has commitments for less than
half that amount, according to Dr. Richard Feachem, head of the Global Fund.

"Public and private funding needs to be greatly expanded," Feachem
said. "Let all countries contribute fully, according to their means."