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Date: | Fri, 6 Oct 2000 15:21:50 GMT |
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Friday, 6 October, 2000, 14:50 GMT 15:50 UK
Mbeki accuses CIA over
Aids
South Africa hosted the world Aids summit in July 2000
President Thabo Mbeki has accused the US
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) of working
with drugs manufacturers to promote the link
between the HIV virus and Aids to boost
profits.
Mr Mbeki made the comments at a closed
meeting of his African National Congress party
(ANC) at parliament last week, according to
South Africa's weekly Mail and Guardian
newspaper.
Mr Mbeki said his own questioning of the link
between the virus and the disease meant he
posed a threat to the US, Western powers and
the world economic order.
Mr Mbeki has been widely criticised by the
international scientific community and members
of the South African establishment, including
Nelson Mandela, for his stance on Aids.
'Deranged'
According to the Mail and Guardian report, Mr
Mbeki said criticism of his Aids policy was a
foretaste of foreign attempts to undermine his
government.
He said his advisers
were trying to find out
who was spreading the
idea that he was
"deranged", and that
such reports were part
of the campaign
against him.
Mr Mbeki repeated an
earlier claim that big
drugs companies
required there to be a
link between HIV and
Aids in order to
increase their profits.
The comments come at an embarrassing
moment.
The government has launched a public
relations campaign focusing on a public
statement by Mr Mbeki that its policy was
"based on the thesis that HIV causes Aids,"
and admitting that he may have caused
confusion.
Confusion
It has also launched a campaign to promote
the use of condoms in order to check the
spread of the disease and combat "confusion"
on transmission.
The comments also detract from the existing
debate about the expense of anti-HIV/Aids
treatments with many activists saying big drug
companies could afford to drop their prices to
the developing world considerably.
There are also issues
around drug patent
rights - a number of
companies produce
cheap generic copies
of HIV/Aids drug
treatments but have
difficulty getting
permission to market
them in the developing
world.
Campaigners say the
cheapest HIV/Aids drug
available in Africa costs
about $100 per person per year but most
Africans live on less than $1 a day
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