NAIROBI, Dec 20 (AFP) - The clinical trials of an AIDS vaccine, developed by Kenyan and British scientists, which were due to begin here Wednesday, have been delayed pending official approval, Kenya's health minister said.

"I would like to point out here that the HIV/AIDS vaccine trials are not starting immediately, but will kick off in due course once certain government approvals have been given," Public Health Minister Sam Ongeri said.

Ongeri also suggested that a dispute over who had the right to patent the vaccine not been resolved.

Earlier this year after the British scientists reportedly patented the trial vaccine, omitting the names of their Kenyan colleagues.

"It is my hope that the issue of inventorship will clearly be ironed out and the true intellectual property rights and patency sorted out," said Ongeri.

He was speaking during the official commissioning of the AIDS Vaccine Reaserch Centre at the University of Nairobi's medical college.

It had earlier been announced that the function was going to be the launch of the first trials of the vaccine on humans in Kenya.

The vaccine was developed after scientists at Oxford University's Medical Research Centre (MRC) and their University of Nairobi counterparts observed that some prostitutes in a Nairobi slum appeared to be immune to the HIV virus to which they had been repeatedly exposed.

Ongeri urged the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative, a global organisation working for the development of AIDS vaccines, the MRC and the University of Nairobi to tackle the issue of the vaccine's patent as a matter of priority.

He, however, noted that the issue of the vaccine's ownership and the sharing of proceeds had been "resolved amically".

The vaccine, which is also currently being tested in Britain, is designed to be most effective against the sub-type A of the HIV virus, which is prevalent is eastern Africa.

It is based on the work of reseachers who found that among 3,000 prostitutes in a Nairobi slum, 30 were resistant to HIV, the human-immunodeficiency virus which is the precursor to AIDS (the acquired immune deficiency syndrome), and never contracted it.

Another 60, although HIV-positive for at least 12 years, exhibited no symptoms of AIDS.

The trial vaccine is based on the immune systems of these resistant women and the long-term HIV-positive survivors.

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