PARIS, Dec 1 (AFP) - World AIDS Day unfolded Friday to appeals for a relentless effort against a virus that has scythed through southern Africa, has Asia firmly in its sights and could revive in complacent rich nations.

President Bill Clinton declared the AIDS virus a menace to world security and renewed America's vow to fight it.

"Because the spread of HIV has reached catastrophic proportions in many areas of our global community, AIDS has become a national and international security threat," Clinton said.

"We reaffirm our shared commitment to carry on the fight until our battle against this devastating disease is won."

French President Jacques Chirac told reporters: "In the world and particularly in Africa, the worst-hit region, we are quite simply -- morally and politically -- in a position of non-assisatnce of a person in danger.

"We have to make a collective effort in these regions as much in the domain of prevention as of research, of treatment."

That also entailed making a major effort to supply affordable medicines, he added.

Chirac, speaking in Rome, also condemned the complacency in Europe that had led to the continued spread of the disease there.

"What is noticeable is a worrying relaxation as much in the domain of prevention as in the domain of vigilance," he said. "We must react."

In the United States, Britain, France and other rich countries, expensive "triple cocktails" of anti-HIV drugs, which suppress the virus but do not eradicate it, have helped to cushion the impact of the disease.

But authorities fear that the very success of these medications may have helped to breed complacency.

Some 5.3 million people became infected with HIV in 2000, bringing to 36.1 million the number of people estimated to have HIV or AIDS worldwide by the end of this year, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO) and UNAIDS.

By far the worst-hit region is sub-Saharan Africa, accounting for 70 percent of the tally.

But experts are also alarmed at explosive growth of the pandemic in Eastern Europe -- especially Russia -- and the potential for human devastation in India and China.

An editorial in the official Beijing newspaper China Daily on Friday said the number of confirmed HIV or AIDS cases in the world's most populous country stood at 20,711 in a population of 1.3 billion.

But specialists put the real figure at a conservative 500,000 at the end of last year, it added.

"China is on a fast track to having a big epidemic," said Edwin Judd, China representative at the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF).

"Unless there is really substantial action in the next three or four years the real danger is that we will have 10 million cases of HIV or AIDS in the year 2010 or worse," he added.

In Vietnam about 20 pink buses decorated with condoms and red ribbons took to the streets of Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, handing out condoms and information pamphlets to passers-by.

Along with Cambodia, China and Myanmar it is one of the worst-affected Asian countries.

In Thailand, a series of low-key educational events replaced the street parades, floats and banners of previous years. The focus was on poor rural areas, where AIDS awareness is low.

AIDS experts credit health officials there for having worked quickly and aggressively against the disease.

In the former Soviet Union, HIV infections have risen in the past year from 420,000 to 700,000, 300,000 of them in Russia.

It is mainly proliferating through intravenous heroin use, says UNAIDS.

Britain's Public Health Laboratory Service warned Friday that the number of people diagnosed with HIV in England and Wales could rise to 29,000 by the end of 2003, a 40 percent increase over the toll at the start of this year.

In the poor countries of sub-Saharan Africa, the cost of western drugs cocktails has fuelled pressure for governments to purchase cheaper "generic" equivalents from countries such as India, Brazil and Thailand, which are sympathetic to their plight.

In an unprecedented move, South Africa's Medicines Control Council on Thursday gave the green light to import a generic drug, fluconazole, from Thailand.

That came a day after the holder of the fluconazole patent, US pharmaceutical giant Pfizer, promised it would supply the original, which is branded as Diflucan, for two years at no cost.

Medecins sans Frontieres (MSF), the Paris-based medical charity, urged poor countries not to be "hoodwinked" by offers of free or cut-price drugs from pharmaceutical companies, and to examine whether such deals were really beneficial compared with generics.

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