Religious leaders joined activists in criticising the president Jeremy Lovell reports from Cape Town

APE TOWN - Aids campaigners attacked President Thabo Mbeki on Wednesday, World Aids Day, for refusing to give the drug AZT to pregnant women with the HIV virus.

Mbeki, avoiding the controversy he has sparked by questioning the safety of AZT, urged South Africans to abstain from sex or use condoms to prevent the spread of the disease that attacks the body's immune system.

AZT can inhibit AIDS and prevent infection in the womb.

"I have been asked to say to President Mbeki and the parliament that this decision is contrary to the principles of the African National Congress and the constitution of South Africa," leading AIDS campaigner Cleve Jones said.

"It is scientifically misinformed. It is economically unsound and it is morally bankrupt," he told a crowd in Cape Town gathered to watch the unveiling of parts of the AIDS Memorial Quilt started by Jones and carried round the globe.

Mbeki caused a national outcry in October when he told parliament the government would not give AZT to HIV-infected pregnant women because there were doubts about its safety.

Africa is at the heart of an epidemic of AIDS and its precursor HIV that is sweeping the planet, shortening average life expectancy and threatening an economic disaster.

An estimated four million South Africans are infected with HIV, or about one in ten of the population, and some two million children are expected to have been orphaned by the disease within a decade.

"Please let AZT come into this country. Stop the murder," leading Sikh activist Ma Jaya Sati Bhagawati urged Mbeki as the AIDS quilt was unfurled before a crowd in which Buddhists rubbed shoulders with Baptists, Jews, Jains and Christians.

Mbeki said AIDS was undermining the economy. "We must urge all our youth to protect themselves at an early age and their loved ones against this disease by abstaining from sexual activity as much as possible, by being faithful to their partners or by always using a condom if they are sexually active," he said in a statement said.

But Mbeki and his government were not the only targets for the AIDS activists.

Jones, who told the crowd he had been carrying HIV for 20 years and his drugs were costing $2,000 a month, called on pharmaceutical firms to stop profitting from the death of the poor and start giving away AIDS treatment drugs.

"We are here today to declare our solidarity in demanding that the wealthy nations of the world and the pharmaceutical industries that are reaping billions of dollars in profits share these treatments in all parts of the world where people are suffering from AIDS until that day when a cure and a vaccine is found," he said to rousing applause.

South Africa's Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang said last month that giving AZT to all South Africans who needed it would cost $50 billion a year, even at reduced prices.

© Reuters

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