ROME, Dec 1 (AFP) - Italian AIDS activists blamed government inaction and Vatican influence Thursday, World AIDS Day, for failing to produce prevention campaigns at a time when HIV infection rates among homosexuals are rising.

"It's not just an economic problem, this government has been heavily influenced by the Vatican, which is opposed to the visibility of homosexuals," Sergio Lo Giudice, who heads a gay rights group called Arcigay, told AFP.

While HIV infection rates in Italy are relatively stable at between 3,500 and 4,000 new cases per year, the latest official figures show that the proportion who are gay rose from 16 to 28 percent between 2004 and 2005.

"The population is dropping its guard because we talk less and less about AIDS in the media but also because the Berlusconi government, since 2001, has cut funds to prevention progammes," Lo Giudice said.

"These funds would help us enormously because they would allow us to distribute large numbers of condoms and to hold training seminars for volunteers," Lo Giudice said.

The last AIDS prevention campaign was in 2004, "but it didn't mention the use of condoms" as a method of prevention, he said.

The founder of the group Alfaomega, Giovanni Malagutti, also said the Catholic Church was an obstacle to effective education campaigns.

"To talk about AIDS means to also talk about sex. And in Italy, with the Church, it is still very difficult to talk about sex, condoms and death," Malagutti said.

The government has also trimmed its contributions towards hospital care for AIDS patients.

"Keeping AIDS suffers in hospital is very expensive and the state often prefers they are taken care of by the associations, that's less of a bother and its less costly," Malagutti said.

Another group, Anlaids, emphasised that AIDS tests are not free in all regions in Italy.

A number of other associations sent a letter to the Health Minister Francesco Storace to protest the lack a prevention campaign this year.

However, on Thursday, Storace announced 21 million euros (24.5 million dollars) would be released for a three-year experimental project to test a possible AIDS vaccine.

Since 1982, the year of the first HIV infection in Italy, more than 55,000 people have developed AIDS and 34,000 have died while a total of 120,000 people are currently HIV positive.

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