NEW YORK, April 27 (AFP) - Shareholders in Pfizer Incorporated on Thursday overwhelmingly approved a merger with Warner-Lambert, a deal that would create one of the world's largest pharmaceutical firms.

The merger was backed by 98.7 percent of Pfizer shareholders, a spokesman said after a stockholder meeting here that prompted a demonstration by AIDS activists who want the company to reduce prices of one its anti-fungal medications in poor countries.

Pfizer, one of whose best known drugs is the anti-impotence treatment Viagra, outbid rival American Home Products to acquire Warner-Lambert for just over 90 billion dollars.

"The merger brings together the industry's two fastest-growing major companies," said Pfizer Incorporated president Henry McKinnell.

"The merger should yield significant cost savings going forward. These cost savings alone will accelerate our projected compounded net income growth through 2002 to at least 25 percent, excluding one-time transition and restructuring charges."

A statement from ACT UP, an AIDS activist group, said a dozen militants broke away from a legal demonstration outside the New York hotel where the meeting was taking place and rushed the stage.

Activists are demanding that Pfizer reduce the price of Diflucan, its medication used to treat cryptococcal meningitis, a potentially fatal brain affliction that they said affects about nine percent of AIDS sufferers.

The company has agreed to provide the medication free to South African HIV/AIDS patients with cryptococal meningitis and is now working with South African authorities to implement the program, according to a Pfizer spokeswoman.

But AIDS activists want the company to reduce the price of the drug or agree to allow poor countries -- notably in Central America and Uganda -- to produce it generically.

"Donations are short-term solutions," said ACT UP member Sharon Ann Lynch.

"Pfizer needs to take substantial steps to provide for long-term, affordable access on terms that work for every country."

Pfizer spokeswoman Mariann Caprino disputed a claim by ACT UP that its militants had disrupted the meeting, saying a handful of militants got nowhere near the 4,000 shareholders and were confined to a hotel stairwell.

She said that for now Pfizer's goal "is to develop a good, working, responsible donation program in South Africa. That's all we're going to discuss at this time."

But she added that the company would be willing to consider extending the donation program other countries "under the right circumstances."

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