OSLO, Nov 4 (AFP) - The fight against AIDS is not just a humanitarian issue, it is also a question of international security in the fight against terrorism, former US president Bill Clinton said Tuesday.
"It seems to me that if you believe in democracy, if you believe in freedom, if you want more partners and fewer terrorists, the rest of us have to do something about this AIDS problem in Africa and in the rest of the world," Clinton told reporters during a visit to Oslo.
Asked whether AIDS presented a more serious threat than terrorism, Clinton replied: "We can't think about one to the exclusion of the other.
"We should continue to fight terror but we have to realize that this AIDS issue is also a security issue," he said after talks with Norwegian Prime Minister Kjell Magne Bondevik.
Clinton said the spread of the disease could lead to "massive political instability".
"If we go from 40 million to 100 million AIDS cases over the decade as it has been predicted, you will see a dramatic change in the political life of the former Soviet Union. We could lose democracies there, we could lose democracies in the Caribbeans."
Such a scenario would be "just crazy", he said, noting that there now exist medicines which can stop the transmission of the disease from mother to child.
As an example, Clinton said Norway would be "less safe if (neighbouring) Russia had 20 percent of its people infected with HIV in the way that the Southern Africans do."
Clinton's Foundation HIV/AIDS Initiative, which is working to combat AIDS in Africa and the Caribbean, announced two weeks ago that it had reached a deal with four generic-drug companies to slash the price of AIDS drugs in parts of the developing world.
Meanwhile, Norway announced a future partnership with the Clinton Foundation to fight AIDS in Tanzania and Mozambique.
"Our contribution could reach 25 million dollars over the next five years provided that the cooperation evolves successfully," Bondevik said.
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