UNITED NATIONS, Dec 1 (AFP) - UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said Thursday that the time had come for world leaders to make good on their promises to curb the global spread of HIV/AIDS.
In a World Aids Day statement, Annan said achievements in raising the profile of the AIDS threat left no excuses for failure to directly combat the disease.
"In the course of the past decade, the world has made considerable progress in the fight against AIDS. It has also made considerable promises," Annan said.
"The time has come to keep them," he added.
Annan highlighted a substantial increase in funding, with eight billion dollars currently available for AIDS efforts in developing countries annually -- compared to 300 million dollars a decade ag
"This is a time to concentrate our minds," Annan said.
"It is a time to recognise that although our response so far has succeeded in some of the particulars, it has yet to match the epidemic in scale," he said.
UN General Assembly president Jan Eliasson said the "woefully slow" international response to the AIDS crisis would prove to be a scar on the conscience of an entire generation.
"This vast human tragedy is all the more unacceptable because it could have been avoided," Eliasson said in an address to be delivered later Thursday at a special World Aids Day event in New York.
"We cannot turn back the clock," Eliasson said. "But we must ensure that, when historians look at the way the world responded to HIV and AIDS, they see that 2006 was the year when the international community finally stepped up to the mark."
Earlier Thursday, the executive director of the UN AIDS agency Peter Piot, speaking in the Indonesian capital, Jakarta, called for an "exceptional" response to the pandemic.
"The world faces a choice," Piot said.
"We can either continue to accept that global efforts will fail to keep pace with ever increasing numbers of HIV infections and AIDS-related deaths, including more and more women and girls.
"Or we can recognise the exceptional global threat posed by AIDS and embrace an equally exceptional response," he said.
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