PARIS, Dec 1 (AFP) - Anti-AIDS activists held pop concerts, candlelit vigils and handed out condoms and T-shirts to mark World AIDS day Wednesday as they learned that the number of AIDS orphans had "skyrocketed" to more than 11 million.

"By the end of this year the world will have seen 11.2 million children orphaned by AIDS," said Peter Piot co-editor of a report drawn up by the UN Programme on HIV/AIDS and the UN Children's Fund, UNICEF, and released Wednesday.

Piot, executive director of UNAIDS, called the figures "staggering."

Meanwhile governments round the world came in for stinging criticism from activists who claim they are not doing enough to avert the AIDS (acquired immune deficiency syndrome) catastrophe.

In South Africa -- where 160 babies are born each day with the HIV virus -- President Thabo Mbeki was accused of "passive genocide" because his government refuses to supply the expensive anti-AIDS drug AZT to pregnant women.

"You just fold your arms and watch them die," activist Adeline Mangcu told Mbeki.

Sub-saharan Africa is the acknowledged epicentre of the pandemic -- accounting for four-fifths of 1998's 2.5 million AIDS deaths.

But elsewhere there is increasing anger among ordinary citizens over the gathering pace of the AIDS catastrophe.

In India -- which accounts for 60 percent of all AIDS cases in Asia -- sex workers said government efforts to contain the epidemic were inadequate.

The health department handed out condoms to mark the day. But New Delhi brothel owner Nimmi Bai told AFP "Here we need at least 40 to 50 boxes a month... we hardly get 10 to 20."

Veteran AIDS crusader Khairati Lal Bhola accused the government of trying "to sweep the issue under the carpet."

In Russia -- which faces an AIDS epidemic as HIV-cases double annually -- the head of the country's AIDS centre said the government should accord the same importance to the disease as to the war in Chechnya.

Vadim Pokrovsky blamed Russia's tottering healthcare system with its chronic lack of medicine, for worsening the conditions of AIDS sufferers.

In China there was consternation after the government banned the country's first television campaign promoting condom use, on the day the health ministry announced China had more than 400,000 HIV carriers.

"China is in a grave situation," said Vice Minister of Health Yin Dakui, while Chinese officials earlier confirmed that under Chinese law it was illegal to advertise sex products.

The new figures mean China is now forth in Asia in numbers of HIV-positive cases, behind India, Thailand and Myanmar.

Central and eastern European countries have increasing rates of people carrying the HIV virus. The worst hit country is Ukraine, with an estimated 240,000 HIV-positive citizens.

UN expert Anja Nitzche described the situation in Ukraine as "dramatic."

A foreign expert, speaking under condition of anonymity criticised the Kiev government, accusing it of lack of will.

In Austria, there were angry reactions to far-right proposals to bring in compulsory AIDS testing for prostitutes, prisoners, the homeless and candidates for immigration.

AIDS awareness groups accused the proposals, made by Joerg Haider's far-right Freedom Party as "thinly-cloaked racism."

Amid all the grim statistics there were occasional flashes of good news.

Doctors in Thailand -- where high rates of AIDS are the grim reality behind the country's flourishing tourist sex trade -- announced education campaigns were finally working.

"The rate of increase of new infections with HIV is declining," Wiwat Ranjanapitayakorn, team leader of UNAIDS Asia-Pacific programme said, though he warned that the number of patients will increase for some years to come as those carrying the HIV virus move into the final stages of the disease.

One in six Thais now carry the HIV virus, Wiwat said.

In Africa, Ethiopian President Negasso Gidada promised his country, ranked third worldwide in terms of the number of people carrying the HIV virus, would "support all efforts to arrest the spread of the deadly disease."

Several southern African states -- Botswana, Malawi, Zimbabwe and Zambia -- have already begun to devise solutions to the growing orphan problem raised in the UN report.

They have set up programmes to care for children on a community basis.

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