December 6, 2002	Friday	Shawwal 1,1423

PARIS, Dec 5: President Jacques Chirac, who is undertaking preparations for next June’s G8 summit that is to be held at Evian in eastern France, said that the summit should focus its attention on the problem of AIDS in the Third World.

He said indeed that he wants for the question of the access of poorer countries to AIDS-related medication be included among the principal subjects of discussion at the summit to be held in the French thermal station at Evian-les-Bains located on Lake Lehman on the country’s border with Switzerland.

But he admits that so far it has been difficult persuading the world’s seven other leading economic powers that the global AIDS epidemic, which continues to go largely unchecked in the Third World - is as much an important part of geostrategic questions as, for example, global terrorism.

Already, he admits, France has a serious problem with 130,000 declared cases of HIV positive, with 5000 new cases arriving every year. But, he says that other parts of the world — notably in Africa — have been overlooked and deserve more attention.