WORLD : France to Boycott AIDS Summit
France said today that it will boycott next month’s world conference on AIDS in San Francisco because of U.S. restrictions on granting visas to victims of the disease.
By ordering the boycott, French Health Minister Claude Evin took the side of AIDS lobbyists who say that special U.S. visa procedures for victims of the acquired immune deficiency syndrome are an invasion of privacy.
A ministry statement said that despite U.S. efforts to ease the restrictions, those that remained were “incompatible with the right to the freedom of travel.”
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