TORONTO, Aug 14, 2006 (AFP) - UN special envoy Stephen Lewis on Monday blasted the US global AIDS strategy, saying Washington was guilty of "insipient neocolonialism" by "dictating" how African governments stem the disease.
"No government in the Western world has the right to dictate policy to African governments around the way in which they respond to the pandemic," Lewis told reporters at the 16th International AIDS Conference here.
Governments may legitimately decide how much to donate and to which countries, he said.
"But, it seems to me to be illegitimate to dictate terms to governments who have their own policies and their own priorities and their own way of responding to the pandemic," said the UN special envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa.
"That's called conditionality. It's totally unacceptable."
The Bush administration backs a so-called "A-B-C" plan to fight AIDS : Abstinence until marriage; Being faithful to one sexual partner; and if those conditions are not practiced, the use of Condoms.
In 2003, US President George W. Bush launched an initiative that allocates 20 percent of a 15-billion-dollars aid package over five years to HIV prevention.
Of this, the US Congress, where the Republican Party wields a majority, has stipulated that at least a third should be spent on encouraging abstinence-until-marriage programmes.
"That kind of insipient neocolonialism is unacceptable ... We're saying to Africa: 'This is how you will respond to the pandemic' and that's not appropriate because African governments are eminently capable of deciding what their priorities are and what the response should be," Lewis said.
Some activists at the conference echoed that view, claiming the US strategy promoted sexual abstinence for political and moral reasons and thus hampered efforts to stem the deadly pandemic that has killed 25 million people.
Dozens of protestors stormed the conference centre on Monday to demand Washington drop its A-B-C policy, shouting "Real prevention means talking sex and drugs."
The five-year US aid package was announced in 2003, making the United States the single largest AIDS fight donor.
Top US officials reject criticism of Bush's plan, deny claims it promotes abstinence to the detriment of other AIDS prevention methods or that it is designed to appease Bush's religious and moral political base of conservative Republicans.
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