Clinton, Mbeki Focus on AIDS During Meeting

President Clinton agreed with South African President Thabo Mbeki on Monday that the United States and other wealthy countries must do their part to help reverse the spread of AIDS in Africa, both by reducing the cost of drugs and by alleviating the poverty that contributes to the epidemic.

Meeting at the White House at the start of a five-day state visit by Mbeki to the United States, Clinton and the South African leader focused much of their discussion on the AIDS crisis and South Africa’s controversial response to it.

Mbeki has refused to distribute the anti-AIDS drug AZT because he says South Africa lacks the medical infrastructure to properly supervise the use of a potentially toxic chemical. And he shocked the international anti-AIDS establishment by appointing to a newly created advisory panel several dissident scientists who challenge the medical profession’s conclusion that the disease is caused by the human immunodeficiency virus.

According to a senior Clinton administration official who attended the meeting, Mbeki argued that it is pointless to fight AIDS with powerful and expensive drugs without tackling “the underlying poverty” at the same time.

“And we agree with him,” the U.S. official said.

In his public remarks, however, Clinton gave no indication of how the United States--which devotes less of its national wealth to foreign aid than any other industrialized nation--would go about helping South Africa and other sub-Saharan countries alleviate poverty.

Earlier this month, Clinton declared the AIDS epidemic to be a threat to U.S. national security and signed an executive order aimed at making AIDS drugs more affordable. Five drug companies said May 11 that they would cut the price of treatments for HIV and AIDS in poor nations.

Mbeki, however, said the costs will still be prohibitive. He wants to be able to obtain cheaper, generic drugs to combat AIDS, a proposal the major drug companies are resisting.

In his public remarks Monday, the South African president dismissed as “pure invention” reports that he had questioned the value of AZT. He said he has questions about the ability of South Africa and other developing countries to “supervise patients closely” to prevent dangerous drug reactions.

An estimated 4 million South Africans are infected with HIV. As many as 34 million people are infected throughout sub-Saharan Africa, and 11 million have already died.

During a formal welcoming ceremony, Mbeki, sporting a red AIDS-awareness ribbon on his blue suit, came right to the point: “The best possible ways have to be found to end poverty and disease. . . . These challenges require of us not just standard responses, but urgent and extraordinary interventions that will ensure that the benefits of the current scientific and technological advances are shared by everyone, including those in the most remote and isolated regions of the world.”

Clinton agreed.

“The United States can and must work with South Africa and all our friends in Africa to fight poverty, disease, war, famine and flood,” he said. “We do so because it is right and because it is in our interests.”

The ceremony was held in the White House East Room because of a drenching rain that prevented the show of military bands, an honor guard and cannon salutes that usually kicks off a state visit.

U.S. officials said Clinton and Mbeki agreed to work together to resolve armed conflicts across the African continent and to urge a peaceful settlement of a deadly dispute over land in Zimbabwe. According to the officials, Mbeki said his government would never encourage black squatters to invade white-owned farms, as Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe has done.

The officials said Clinton told Mbeki that Washington sees South Africa and Nigeria as the “anchors” of developing democracy in Africa. Elected governments in both nations are coming under increasing domestic pressure to provide a more prosperous life along with political freedom.