WASHINGTON, April 26: The Bush administration is accusing China, Russia, Pakistan and six other nations of failing to protect American movies, computer software and other copyrighted material from widespread piracy.

The administration on Friday placed the nine countries on a “priority watch list” that will subject them to extra scrutiny and could eventually lead to economic sanctions — if the administration decides to pursue complaints before the World Trade Organisation.

In addition to China, Russia and Pakistan, the other six countries targeted were Argentina, Chile, India, Israel, Thailand and Venezuela.

The administration named another 31 countries to a lower-level watch list, indicating it has concerns about copyright violations in those nations but they don’t warrant the highest level of scrutiny.

Because of improvements in their efforts to protect US intellectual property rights, four countries — Egypt, Lebanon, Turkey and Ukraine — were taken off the “priority” list where they were last year and placed on the lower-level watch list.

While business organisations praised the report, Oxfam, the international aid confederation, criticised the document for targeting Thailand and India for their policies of making low-cost generic drugs available to poor people to battle HIV-AIDS and other diseases. Rohit Malpani, an Oxfam policy adviser, said that 80 per cent of the generic drugs used in developing nations to combat AIDS were manufactured in India while Thailand is supplying generic drugs to poor people in that country.—AP