Mbeki accuses CIA over Aids

President Thabo Mbeki has accused the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) of working with drugs manufacturers to promote the link between the HIV virus and Aids to boost profits.

Mr Mbeki made the comments at a closed meeting of his African National Congress party (ANC) at parliament last week, according to South Africa's weekly Mail and Guardian newspaper.

Mr Mbeki said his own questioning of the link between the virus and the disease meant he posed a threat to the US, Western powers and the world economic order.

Mr Mbeki has been widely criticised by the international scientific community and members of the South African establishment, including Nelson Mandela, for his stance on Aids.

'Deranged'

According to the Mail and Guardian report, Mr Mbeki said criticism of his Aids policy was a foretaste of foreign attempts to undermine his government.

AZT

The government refuses to supply the drug AZT to pregnant women

He said his advisers were trying to find out who was spreading the idea that he was "deranged", and that such reports were part of the campaign against him.

Mr Mbeki repeated an earlier claim that big drugs companies required there to be a link between HIV and Aids in order to increase their profits.

The comments come at an embarrassing moment.

The government has launched a public relations campaign focusing on a public statement by Mr Mbeki that its policy was "based on the thesis that HIV causes Aids," and admitting that he may have caused confusion.

Confusion

It has also launched a campaign to promote the use of condoms in order to check the spread of the disease and combat "confusion" on transmission.

Poster

The government has just launched an Aids prevention campaign

The comments also detract from the existing debate about the expense of anti-HIV/Aids treatments with many activists saying big drug companies could afford to drop their prices to the developing world considerably.

There are also issues around drug patent rights - a number of companies produce cheap generic copies of HIV/Aids drug treatments but have difficulty getting permission to market them in the developing world.

Campaigners say the cheapest HIV/Aids drug available in Africa costs about $100 per person per year but most Africans live on less than $1 a day.

Mbeki fingers CIA in Aids conspiracy

PRESIDENT Thabo Mbeki believes the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is part of a conspiracy to promote the view that HIV causes Aids.
Mbeki also thinks that the CIA is working covertly alongside the big US pharmaceutical manufacturers to undermine him because, by questioning the link between HIV and Aids, he is thought to pose a risk to the profits of drug companies making anti-retroviral treatments.

Mbeki fingered the CIA in his address to African National Congress MPs at a caucus meeting in Parliament last Thursday.

Mbeki also told the ANC caucus that the fact that South Africa under him was emerging as a leader of attempts by the developing world to get a better deal in the international economic system was a threat to the US and other major Western powers.

In what was described as a “rambling” address, Mbeki said that if one agreed that HIV caused Aids, it followed that the condition had to be treated by drugs and those drugs were produced by the big Western drug companies. The drug companies therefore needed HIV to cause Aids, so they promoted the thesis that HIV caused Aids, he said.

Mbeki said his advisers were trying to find out who was spreading the idea that he was “deranged”. These reports were clearly part of a campaign against him and his government.

The struggle he and the government were waging for a better economic deal for developing countries and against the propaganda being put out by the drug companies and, covertly, the CIA were all linked, he said. MPs should not be afraid to take on these powerful international forces, he added.

Mbeki’s remarks last Thursday disrupted desperate attempts by government spin doctors - both inside South African and abroad - to lay to rest the HIV/Aids controversy in which the president has embroiled himself and to repair the battering Mbeki’s image has taken.