Diplomacy Keeps Peace at AIDS Meeting : Strategy: Organizers implemented plan to incorporate ACT UP members in proceedings and mollify other activists.

Dr. Paul Volberding, California’s best known AIDS researcher, worked four years to organize the world AIDS conference here, and hours before he was to welcome 10,000 scientists to the city, he found himself in one last, crucial negotiation.

He was sitting down with unruly activists after they stormed the busy lobby of the Marriott Hotel, the conference headquarters.

The talks continued over breakfast the next morning, then Volberding’s staff struck a deal to defuse the tension and give more activists access to the meeting. Free passes would be given to 150 people afflicted with AIDS who were unable to afford the $550 admission tab.

“I think it shows when reasonable people sit down they can get something done,” said Zakkary Zoah, a protester from Denver who put on a coat and tie to announce the settlement.

Conference sponsors have decided that appeasement is better than confrontation with AIDS activists, who at last year’s meeting in Montreal gained entry and took over the stage during the opening session.

So for the first time, the annual gathering of scientists who confront AIDS in labs and doctor’s offices has been opened to those who deal with the disease in hospices, at home and on the streets--and who blame the ponderous procedures of science for the mounting death toll.

The activists--including, notably, militants from ACT UP, the group that commandeered the Montreal stage--have been carefully wooed. They have been invited as panelists and speakers and their literature is handed out alongside official pronouncements. The cooperation has been so close that Leon McCusick, a San Francisco psychologist with AIDS who helped organize the conference, joked that riots were part of the official program.

Some scientists have complained that the quality of the conference sessions has been degraded--and some stayed home, fearing unpleasant clashes--but Volberding said activists need to be recognized as an integral part of the AIDS fight.

“Many of us scientists have not gotten used to being confronted by angry demonstrators, but though it is uncomfortable it does some good,” Volberding said.

On Saturday, Volberding also led a contingent of conference delegates that joined an AIDS march and rally in downtown San Francisco. “The apparent divisions between us are not real,” he told a rally of 4,000 people.

Bringing the conference to San Francisco was something of a risk. The city’s very social fabric has been torn by AIDS, which has claimed more than 5,000 lives here, and there is palpable anger about the slow pace of scientific advances among the large population of infected people who feel their time slipping away.

In order to head off trouble, sponsors created a task force of community activists and hired Dana Van Gorder, a political operative in the gay community here, as a liaison to potential protesters. He met with ACT UP and other groups before the conference. The result has been that, despite about 280 arrests of ACT UP protesters on the streets, conference proceedings have not been disrupted.

Even before the Marriott demonstration, organizers made 375 free conference passes available for people infected with the human immunodeficiency virus and gave another 150 passes to various nonprofit organizations to distribute.

For San Francisco residents hungry for news about AIDS, free nightly reviews of conference highlights have been delivered at a public auditorium before crowds as large as 700. Anthony Fauci, the government’s top AIDS researcher, spoke at one of the sessions and took questions from activists and people with AIDS.

“There is absolutely intense interest about the meeting and about AIDS in general in San Francisco,” Van Gorder said.

Sponsors felt the biggest threat to the conference would come from ACT UP, a loose organization of activists in about 40 cities and several countries that advocates civil disobedience.

Last Wednesday, the opening day of the conference, New York ACT UP activist Peter Staley was invited to speak from the podium. He promised friends and reporters that something interesting would happen.

But he was asked not to call any demonstrators up on stage, and a line of police officers in riot gear waited behind a curtain offstage to back up the order. The activist cooperated and urged his supporters to gather only at the foot of the stage, which they did.

In a speech applauded by most of the 12,000 delegates, Staley said that AIDS activists feel increasingly alienated from the scientists working to solve the disease. “From your side, we’re being constantly told to butt out,” he said.

But he added a conciliatory note, saying that “cooperation between all of us is the fastest way to a cure. I do know that we have judged you at times unfairly.” Staley received a loud ovation from the conference delegates.

Conference organizers remain nervous, however, about the group’s plans for today, when Secretary of Health and Human Services Louis Sullivan speaks at the closing session. ACT UP members have been bitterly critical of President Bush’s decision not to attend the conference and to send Sullivan.

More than 100 ACT UP members are believed to have credentials that will allow them admission to the hall where Sullivan speaks.

Prominent members insist, however, that while the group considers disruption one of its key tools, it is not a violent organization.

“ACT UP has never committed an act of violence against people or called for it,” said Mark Harrington, a leading member from New York. “Usually when we go out there it’s us who gets hurt. We are not AIDS terrorists and I don’t think we will become AIDS terrorists.”