WASHINGTON, Dec 23 (AFP) - The United States has promised to let countries export life-saving drugs to needy countries without making any challenge to the World Trade Organization.

The statement was issued late Friday, after the United States refused to sign on to a World Trade Organization deal aimed at providing poor countries with better access to critical medicines.

Negotiators for the 144 member countries of the WTO admitted after a meeting of the ruling General Council in Geneva that they were bitterly disappointed at failing to meet a self-imposed deadline for a deal.

But they vowed to press on with talks in the new year, and set a new deadline for a meeting scheduled on February 10 to 11, 2003.

Ministers meeting in the Qatari capital Doha in November last year gave the Geneva-based WTO until the end of 2002 to devise a solution to the problem of providing critical, patented drugs at an affordable price to combat diseases from HIV/AIDS to tuberculosis or malaria.

"The United States will continue to work with other WTO members to try to find a solution within the WTO," US Trade Representative Robert Zoellick's office said in a statement.

"In the meantime, the United States will implement the Doha Declaration by pledging not to challenge any WTO member that breaks WTO rules to export drugs produced under compulsory license to a country in need."

He called on other countries to follow suit as a way of providing an interim solution.

The world's trading nations had been trying to hammer out an agreement on a system to relax global patent rules, which would have enabled poorer countries without a pharmaceutical industry to import cheaper generic copies of patented medicines to treat illnesses such as AIDS, tuberculosis or malaria.

But the United States said it could not sign on because some WTO members and aid lobbyists had pressed to expand the focus from battling major diseases in poor countries "to allow much wealthier countries to override a wide range of drug patents, for example, Viagra."

"This approach could seriously undermine the WTO rules on patents that provide incentives for development of new pharmaceutical products, including those to treat diseases of a non-epidemic nature."

021223
AF0212A2

Copyright © AFP or Agence France-Presse, 2002 - All Rights Reserved. AFP articles contained on the AEGiS web site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, displayed, published or broadcast without AFP's prior written permission. You may make one copy of each article for your personal, non-commercial use only; more copies would require AFP's prior written permission..  http://www.afp.com/

AEGiS is made possible through unrestricted grants from Boehringer Ingelheim, the National Library of Medicine, and donations from users like you. Always watch for outdated information. This article first appeared in 2002. This material is designed to support, not replace, the relationship that exists between you and your doctor.

©1990, 2002 - AEGiS. AEGiS presents published material, reprinted with permission and neither endorses nor opposes any material. All materials appearing on AEGiS are protected by copyright as a collective work or compilation under U.S. copyright and other laws and are the property of AEGiS, or the party credited as the provider of the content.