France accuses US of bullying on Aids issue

France today accused the US of bullying poor countries into ceding rights to make cheap generic AIDS drugs.

A US official denied the French allegation at the International Aids Conference in Bangkok as “nonsense”, while meeting delegates lamented that only about 7% of the six million people in poor countries who urgently need anti-retroviral treatment were getting it.

“The biggest threat to our livelihood, our happiness is Aids,” Hollywood actor Richard Gere told the conference.

”A vicious terrorist is out there. It is not Osama bin Laden, it is Aids.”

Since the last Aids conference in Barcelona in 2002, the number of people being treated for the disease has doubled in the developing world to 440,000.

At the same time, six million people died from the virus and 10 million people became infected, WHO figures show.

“By these measures of human life, the ones that really matter, we have failed. And we have failed miserably to do enough in the precious time that has passed since Barcelona,” said Jim Kim, WHO’s Aids director.

An estimated 38 million people are infected with HIV, mostly in poor countries: 25 million in sub-Saharan Africa and 7.2 million in Asia.

World Trade Organisation rules give developing countries the flexibility to ignore foreign patents and produce copies of expensive drugs in times of health crises.

All WTO members including the United States have signed an agreement to respect that clause.

But there is nothing to prevent a country from imposing patent restrictions in a bilateral trade agreement, such as one Washington is negotiating with Thailand.

France’s global ambassador on Aids, Mireille Guigaz, said Chirac was not trying to create tension with Washington.

“The United States wants to put pressure on developing countries who try to stand up for their own industries,” Guigaz said. “This is a problem.”