PRETORIA - Jean Chrétien refused yesterday to criticize the controversial AIDS policies of Thabo Mbeki, the President of South Africa, despite recent vows that Canada will take a tougher stand against African nations that fail to show progress on social reform.
Mr. Chrétien said it is not Canada's place to dispute the President's belief that the HIV virus does not cause AIDS, even though Ottawa has committed $10-million in emergency funding to battle the pandemic in South Africa. Mr. Mbeki has also said the disease is spread through dirty water and unsanitary living conditions.
"I am not to comment on the particular problem of South Africa because I don't want him to come and tell me what to do with some problems in Canada," Mr. Chrétien said at a joint news conference following day-long meetings with Mr. Mbeki and several other southern African leaders in Pretoria.
During his 11-day tour of Africa, Mr. Chrétien has repeatedly emphasized the need to take a "carrot and stick" approach to dealing with African nations receiving Canadian foreign aid. At stops in Morocco, Algeria, Nigeria and South Africa, he has promoted plans by the Group of Eight industrialized nations to reward countries showing social and democratic progress while withholding funding for poor performers.
But while Mr. Chrétien has stressed that AIDS is among the biggest threats to African productivity -- hindering the country's ability to trade with the developed world -- he said Canada would not micromanage one country's approach to a particular health problem.
"A country without any resources cannot fight AIDS. So we cannot make it a conditionality that as long as you have a level of AIDS we will not help you. It would be self-defeating," Mr. Chrétien said.
Mr. Mbeki has been widely criticized at home and internationally for questioning widely held findings about HIV, including whether it causes AIDS, and refusing wide access in South Africa to anti-retroviral drugs that can reduce mother-to-child infection.
South Africa's highest court last week ordered Mr. Mbeki's government to reverse existing policy and offer a key anti-AIDS drug, nevirapine, to HIV-infected pregnant women during childbirth. The South African President argued the drug, which studies have shown reduces the chance of mothers infecting newborn babies, is too expensive and toxic.
The two leading causes of HIV infection in Africa are unprotected heterosexual sex and mother-to-child transmission.
South Africa's ruling African National Congress has described the drugs as poisonous and Western attitudes to the spread of the disease as racism because they perpetuate the myth of Africans as "immoral, diseased and sexually depraved animals."
About 4.7 million South Africans are infected with HIV and some estimates suggest up to 25% of the sexually active population between 18 and 50 years of age have the virus.
Yesterday, Mr. Mbeki said South Africa funds the "largest AIDS program on the African continent" and became combative when questioned about his views on the connection between HIV and AIDS.
"I don't know what is the importance of this question. You should ask that question of scientists," said Mr. Mbeki, whose government is considered the most progressive in Africa.
"We don't have time to discuss this and discuss the facts -- not the prejudice and the beliefs, but the facts."
Mr. Chrétien has taken a soft rhetorical line with his African hosts so far during his 11-day tour of Africa.
He is travelling to six countries to promote plans by African nations and the Group of Eight industrialized countries to develop a dramatic new development plan for the continent. At the plan's core is a commitment by African nations to introduce democratic, social, legal and human rights reforms in exchange for increased foreign aid and access to global markets.
At yesterday's news conference, Mr. Chrétien said the G-8 would continue its carrot and stick approach to Africa.
"You know, you need a stick, otherwise there will be no progress. But you need, carrots too -- even more -- because I would hope we'll not use the stick, because they will realize that it is their best interest, and the commitment of the nations will be quite evident when we meet [at the upcoming G-8 summit] in Kananaskis in Canada in June."
But Mr. Chrétien is using more carrot than stick on this tour. During weekend meetings in Nigeria, he brushed aside a potentially deadly incident in which Nigerian security police fired a pistol at a well-marked Canadian van carrying reporters, diplomats and an RCMP officer.
"These are mistakes and when you travel, incidents happen," Mr. Chrétien said, adding he would not complain to Nigerian officials because "it is not my style. I'm not a whiner."
He joked about the incident again yesterday with Mr. Mbeki.
He also declined to criticize the practice of medieval Sharia law in northern Nigeria, in which thieves are punished with amputation and adulterous women can face death by stoning.
Canadian opposition politicians yesterday said Mr. Chrétien appeared unwilling to back up his tough talk on future African aid with action.
"He shouldn't say one thing at home and another to leaders in Africa," said John Reynolds, the Canadian Alliance's parliamentary leader. "But it's not unlike Liberals, who say one thing in Quebec and another thing in British Columbia."
Canada has played an active role in funding the fight against AIDS in Africa. Mr. Chrétien was among the G-8 leaders who last year committed to spending a total of $2-billion on battling the disease through the World Health Organization. In Pretoria, the Canadian International Development Agency recently spent $40,000 to develop an intensive-care ward at Kalafong Hospital for HIV-infected mothers who deliver premature babies.
Mr. Chrétien was originally scheduled to visit the hospital, where the drug nevirapine is being tested on HIV-infected mothers and newborn babies. But the event was cancelled because he is leaving South Africa today to attend Tuesday's funeral of the Queen Mother in London.
Dr. Peter Koorts, a pediatrician at the hospital, would not comment on Mr. Mbeki's refusal to widely distribute nevirapine, but said it is clear from testing that the drug helps to prevent the spread of HIV.
"For us it would be quite important, definitely. Anything that you can do to reduce the transmission rate obviously is important," said Dr. Koorts. "Whether it is nevirapine or another drug that can be used, as long as you have got some pill that is cost-effective to reduce it, it would obviously be very important," he said.
"We live in a health care system that is struggling in terms of money. But if you are looking at the total cost of admitting children with HIV again and again because of recurrent infections -- if we can reduce that, then obviously the cost will be lessened by that."
Mr. Mbeki, however, remained noncommittal yesterday when asked if his government would respect the court ruling and begin distributing the drug. He said tests of the drug's effectiveness are still unproven.
salberts@nationalpost.com
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