NEW DELHI, Dec 13 (AFP) - Some 30,000 newborns in India are infected every year with the human immuno-deficiency virus (HIV) that leads to AIDS, UNICEF said in an end-of-the-century report released here Monday.

"The alarming number of those infected should be a warning sign," UNICEF Representative in India Alan Court told a news conference highlighting the references to India in this year's global report on children.

"Every month that the full-scale campaign needed to stop the terrifying HIV pandemic is postponed children and young people become infected with the fatal virus," the report said.

Highlighting the social powerlessness of women in India, the report refers to a study conducted in the western Indian city of Pune.

"Out of 400 women attending clinics in the city of Pune, one fourth had sexually transmitted diseases, while 13.6 percent tested positive for HIV. Now 91 percent of these women said they had only had sex with their husbands," Court said.

"In India AIDS is the biggest threat to the survival of millions of children. Even in India's insurgency-ridden northeast there is greater danger from AIDS than armed conflict."

India admitted for the first time this month that as many as 3.5 million people nationwide were carrying the HIV virus.

A health ministry report which contained figures for the urban population up to mid-1998, said 1.4 million males living in urban India were HIV-positive, compared to 800,000 women.

Court said UNICEF had given India this year 300 million dollars in aid for child welfare programmes to reduce disparities in the achievements of children across regions, gender, class and communities.

"The programme would also focus on children affected by violence in the insurgency-torn states of northeastern India and Jammu and Kashmir."

The UNICEF said in addition to insurgency-related violence, children in India had suffred acutely this year from the ravages of nature.

"Nearly 3.3 million children have been badly affected by the cyclone in eastern Orissa. We need to reconstuct their schools and give them a semblance of normalcy."

The October 29 cyclone, the century's worst to hit India, razed one million houses, claimed some 10,000 lives and hit a third of Orissa's 35 million people.

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