BANGKOK, July 13 (AFP) - UN Secretary General Kofi Annan on Tuesday called on the United States to show the same commitment to the battle against AIDS as the war on terror.
He said terrorism could kill thousands but "here we have an epidemic that is killing millions," he said in an interview with Britain's BBC, quoted on its website.
Annan said the US was spending huge amounts on fighting terrorism but had not lived up to promises over AIDS, and should put more towards the Global Fund, the world's war chest to fight the pandemic.
President George W. Bush has pledged 15 billion dollars over five years to fight AIDS, but mainly through bilateral arrangements with countries rather than the Global Fund.
"The Global Fund is ready to go," Annan, who is in the Thai capital for the 15th World AIDS Conference, told the BBC.
"If individual governments begin to set up their own initiatives, they start from scratch, it takes longer, the money that they hold will not be spent for a long time."
He said he hoped the US and the European Union could each contribute one billion dollars a year to the fund.
With money from elsewhere, he said "the fund could have assured and sustained support through the next five years or so".
Activists and workers with AIDS have used the conference here to call for more money from developed nations, saying a looming disaster threatens Asia and Eastern Europe unless immediate action is taken.
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