Summit Calls for Greater AIDS Efforts : But Says Measures Should Not Infringe on Human Rights

The seven leaders meeting here called Wednesday for greater national and international efforts to prevent the spread of the deadly AIDS virus but cautioned that all measures taken should be “in accordance with the principles of human rights.”

The heads of the economic summit nations, winding up their annual three-day session, urged that priority be given to existing organizations involved in the battle against AIDS by providing them with necessary financial, personnel and administrative resources and said the World Health Organization is the best forum for coordinating a worldwide effort.

Millions May Be Infected

WHO, a U.N. agency that has been leading the international effort to combat the virus that causes acquired immune deficiency syndrome, estimates that between 5 million and 10 million people are infected with the virus worldwide. It also estimates that during the next five years, the epidemic could result in as many as 50 million to 100 million additional infections.

The summit’s emphasis on protecting human rights is significant because of rising concern that growing pressure for mandatory testing and other extreme measures could result in violation of individual rights to privacy and confidentiality.

In fact, civil libertarian and gay rights groups have protested President Reagan’s May 31 call for routine AIDS testing, even though he stipulated that the tests should be administered on a voluntary basis. The President urged state governments to make AIDS tests available for persons applying for marriage licenses or seeking treatment at drug abuse or venereal disease clinics.

Meese Order Protested

There also have been some protests over Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese III’s order requiring mandatory AIDS testing for all federal prisoners and all immigrants entering the United States.

The summit nations endorsed the statement on AIDS and a statement discussing several political issues, both submitted by the summit’s chairman, Italy’s caretaker Prime Minister Amintore Fanfani. They also issued a lengthy economic declaration.

A senior White House official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that AIDS was discussed late in the meeting and that the discussion was not detailed. He said it was dealt with in the Fanfani statement, rather than as part of the summit-ending statement, because there had been no broad staff work by summit nations to prepare a statement representing the views of each of them.

Before they adjourned, the summit leaders accepted Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney’s invitation to hold the 14th annual summit next year in Toronto.

Besides Italy, Canada and the United States, the summit nations are France, Britain, West Germany and Japan.

Reagan, who, except for a one-day trip to Rome for a visit with Pope John Paul II, has been in Venice since June 3, has scheduled a press conference here today and will meet later in the day with businessmen attending an Italian-American conference on private initiatives. The conference was organized by Reagan’s Board of Advisers on Private Initiatives.

To Berlin Friday

The President leaves Friday morning for Berlin, where he will participate in that city’s 750th birthday celebration. He then will fly to Bonn, where he will confer with West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl during a refueling stop before continuing to Andrews Air Force Base near Washington. The White House staff announced that Reagan will make a televised report to the nation Monday night from the Oval Office on the summit and on a meeting of North Atlantic Treaty Organization foreign ministers that opens today in Reykjavik, Iceland.

Secretary of State George P. Shultz, who attended the summit here, traveled Wednesday to Iceland for the Reykjavik meeting, which is expected to result in a unified NATO position on the U.S.-Soviet negotiations to eliminate medium- and short-range nuclear missiles from Europe.

The AIDS epidemic has spread so rapidly since it was first identified in 1981 that regardless of prevention and control measures, the disease will have killed 3 million people by 1991, according to Dr. Jonathan Mann, director of the World Health Organization’s AIDS program.

“AIDS has created a worldwide emergency,” Mann said last week at the third International Conference on AIDS in Washington. “Global AIDS control will require billions of dollars over the next five years.”

AIDS threatens all countries, Mann said; “there are no geographic safe zones and no racial exemptions.”

As of June 8, according to public health figures, 36,514 persons in the United States had been stricken with the disease and 21,514 had died. Public health officials project 270,000 new cases and 175,000 deaths in the United States during the next five years.

The summit leaders, in their statement, declared that all nations should be encouraged to cooperate fully with WHO and its special program of AIDS-related activities.

Education Stressed

They agreed that in the absence of a vaccine or cure, the best hope for combatting and preventing AIDS rests on “a strategy based on educating the public about the seriousness of the AIDS epidemic, the ways the AIDS virus is transmitted and the practical steps each person can take to avoid acquiring or spreading it.

The leaders also:

-- Urged that further cooperation be promoted for basic and clinical studies on prevention, treatment and the exchange of information.

-- Supported joint action by researchers seeking a cure for the disease by means of clinical testing on components of the virus and the development of a successful vaccine.

-- Endorsed a French proposal for creating an international committee on the ethical issues raised by AIDS.

Regional Concerns

A separate summary of political issues dealt with a variety of regional concerns, particularly those with East-West connotations.

On Afghanistan, the statement said, “emphasis was placed once again on the need to keep up pressure” in an effort to end the Soviet military operation there.

Similarly, the statement criticized the presence of foreign troops in Cambodia as creating an obstacle to peace in Southeast Asia. Vietnamese troops are deployed in Cambodia in support of a Vietnamese-imposed regime.

And the newly independent island nations of the South Pacific, the statement noted, face “difficult economic situations” and need to proceed with their development “in conditions of complete freedom from outside political interference,” an apparent reference to Soviet activities in the region.

Korean Situation

The document said the summit reviewed the “situation in the Korean Peninsula,” expressing the hope that the 1988 Olympic Games, to be held in South Korea, “may create a climate favorable to the development of a more open dialogue between North and South.”

In only a brief reference to South Africa, to which Mulroney had hoped to give significant attention, the summit nations agreed that only if the system of racial separation known as apartheid is dismantled and replaced by a non-racial democracy can a peaceful and lasting solution to that nation’s problems be found.