JOHANNESBURG, Sept 20 (AFP) - The Anglican Church in South Africa has weighed into a huge AIDS controversy here, saying history will rank lack of action by the government as a crime against humanity on the same scale as apartheid.

Cape Town archbishop Njongonkulu Ndungane, the head of the church, issued a statement Tuesday saying: "What is becoming increasingly clear is the futility of looking to government for a solution. At the very least, we need to apply pressure on our political leaders to change this situation."

According to government figures, 4.2 million people -- one-tenth of the population -- were infected with HIV at the end of last year, but President Thabo Mbeki and Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang claim -- in opposition to all mainstream scientists -- that poverty and other diseases, as well as HIV, cause AIDS.

They refuse to supply cheap drugs to pregnant women to prevent mother-to-child transmission even though 5,000 HIV-postive babies are born each month.

They claim more research is needed into the toxicity of those drugs, even though they are widely used abroad.

Ndungane called on all religious leaders to meet and develop a plan of action to fight the pandemic.

"We need an urgent strategic planning meeting of all interested parties so as to develop a plan of action and we need to move fast," he said.

"We believe that history will measure this country's slow response to the pandemic in human, not statistical terms, and that the inherent injustices will be judged as serious a crime against humanity as apartheid," Ndungane said.

Arts and Culture Minister Ben Ngubane, a member of the minority Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP), broke ranks with Mbeki on AIDS Tuesday, telling reporters he believed that HIV and AIDS were "inseparable."

Correctional Service Minister Ben Skosana meanwhile announced that the number of prisoners with HIV or full-blown AIDS had tripled in three years -- from 1,094 in July 1997 to 3,209 in July this year.

The 1.7-million-strong Congress of South African Trade Unions declared on Monday that the link between HIV and AIDS was "irrefutable" -- a stand mirrored Tuesday by the South African Communist Party, which forms the ruling alliance with the union federation and Mbeki's African National Congress.

Tshabalala-Msimang meanwhile said on Tuesday she still had no idea of the details of an offer by international pharmaceutical companies to bring down the price of AIDS drugs.

She said the companies insisted they would engage not in dialogue or negotiation, but "talks about talks."

She told parliament's health committee she expected to hear details when she travelled to Geneva with other African health ministers on September 29 for talks with the companies.

In May, five of the world's largest pharmaceutical companies said they were ready to slash the prices of their HIV/AIDS drugs for developing nations if the drugs could be safely and effectively administered and their distribution controlled.

Tshabalala-Msimang said sub-Saharan African countries had decided to group themselves in four blocs -- Central, Southern, East and West -- for negotiations with the companies.

But she said that even if the companies dropped the price of anti-retroviral drugs, South Africa would not be able to afford them.

No thought had been given to the cost of infrastructure and laboratory services needed to support the administering of the drug, she said, adding that the last thing her department wanted was to give anti-retrovirals when it could not monitor patients.

"That would be a disaster," she said.

Tshabalala-Msimang also said her ministry had asked the cabinet for permission to convene a meeting of ministers of health of the Non-Aligned Movement in May next year.

South Africa currently chairs the movement, and she said she wanted to ensure that when it handed over the chairmanship, it would have influenced the way health and drug policies were implemented over the next three years.

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