EU: Mr Nelson Mandela called on Europe yesterday to match Washington's commitment to fighting AIDS, but a European Commission official said it was not ready to make new funds available.
The former South African president praised President Bush for making a quantum leap in funding AIDS research and treatment and said he had "moved the debate from hundreds of millions of dollars to tens of billions".
Mr Bush signed into law in May a $15 billion plan to help combat the deadly disease in Africa and the Caribbean, trebling US spending over five years. He urged Congress to approve the plan during his trip to Africa last week.
"Given the size of its collective population and economy, Europe should at least be matching if not exceeding the United States contribution," Mr Mandela told more than 5,000 delegates at the International AIDS Society conference in Paris.
However, EU officials say they are already doing more than the US in fighting the virus that has infected 42 million people worldwide, nearly three-quarters of them in Africa.
The EU says members of the 15-nation bloc, together with the executive Commission, have pledged a total of $2.37 billion to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria - launched a year ago at the behest of UN Secretary General Kofi Annan.
The US government has authorised up to $1 billion a year for the global fund, as long as its contribution does not exceed more than one third of the total - a condition meant to encourage other countries to give more.
"We are not going to be putting new money on the table," said Mr Jean-Charles Ellermann, spokesman for the European Commission, the largest European donor, adding it was still possible individual member-states might contribute more. - (Reuters)