New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) and other groups said villager reports have indicated a tougher approach towards their status even as China actively seeks international funding to fight AIDS.

The charges came after farmers in one village in Henan told AFP last week 13 farmers who had allegedly joined a protest calling for the establishment of a hospital were arrested in a night raid on June 22 in which hundreds of police beat them indiscriminately.

Police confirmed the arrests and those of three other villagers in an earlier incident, saying they face charges of robbery and "attacking state offices."

HRW said in a statement that police in Henan, where many villages are devastated by AIDS, are increasingly using arbitrary arrests and violence against HIV-positive protestors seeking access to treatment.

"Persecuting HIV-positive protestors is doubly outrageous given that the state was complicit in their infection in the first place," Joanne Csete, director of HRW's HIV/AIDS and Human Rights Program, said Wednesday.

"Henan authorities seem to want to sweep their role in the AIDS epidemic under the rug by silencing protesters."

From the mid-1980s to 1990s, millions of villagers in Henan and other central provinces were infected with HIV through government-managed or approved blood collection centers.

Officials were motivated by the high profits available from the domestic and international blood products industry and for villagers, the sale of their blood was a much needed source of income.

Since the government finally admitted to the problem in December 2001, farmers have called for access to effective treatment, care for people with HIV/AIDS, or simply a reduction in taxes.

They have also decried alleged official corruption and misappropriation of state AIDS funding.

Local government officials responded to earlier protests with promises of aid and had detained a few people, but released them after a few days.

But the response in more recent incidents has been more severe, HRW and others said.

In addition to the raid at Xiongqiao village, police also blocked 100 farmers from Wenlou village from approaching a hospital to protest discrimination against HIV-positive patients on May 17, when the World Health Organization was visiting to investigate the respiratory disease SARS, HRW said.

Police severely beat one man, HRW said.

Earlier in June, five HIV-positive residents of Xiongqiao went to the provincial capital Zhengzhou to complain about the lack of health care services in their village, but were seized and taken away.

BEIJING (AFP) - The London-based rights group Amnesty International expressed concerns over indiscriminate beatings and arrests of HIV-positive villagers in central China and urged a full and public report on how the people contracted the disease during blood donation drives.

The rights group was referring to an incident on June 22, when up to 600 policemen stormed into Xiongqiao village in Wulong township in Henan province and arrested AIDS activists who had protested the government's treatment of thousands of HIV carriers in the region.

Other villages in the area have also been raided and suspected protest leaders rounded up since June 22, rights groups and AIDS activists said.

In a statement, Amnesty urged "the Chinese authorities to fully investigate the extent of HIV/AIDS transmission in Henan and other provinces due to the operation of blood-collection centres in the 1990s and to publish the findings of the investigation."

The group also expressed "concern at reports of indiscriminate beatings by police, and others apparently under the command of the police, during the raid on 22 June as well as allegations that five Zhengzhou (city) petitioners were also beaten in custody."

Authorities should clarify the names of all those detained in connection with the police raids and provide immediate guarantees for their safety, the group said.

Charges against the detainees should also be clarified, while those charged should be given access to lawyers and full medical treatment while in detention, it said.

Up to a million farmers are believed to have contracted the HIV virus after selling blood at unsanitary government-approved blood stations beginning in the mid-1980s, leaving whole villages devastated.

Human Rights Watch said earlier this week that police in Henan, where many villages are devastated by AIDS, are increasingly using arbitrary arrests and violence against HIV-positive protestors seeking access to treatment.

"Persecuting HIV-positive protestors is doubly outrageous given that the state was complicit in their infection in the first place," said Joanne Csete, director of HRW's HIV/AIDS and Human Rights Program.

"Henan authorities seem to want to sweep their role in the AIDS epidemic under the rug by silencing protestors."

Since the government admitted the problem in 2001 after initial silence, farmers have called for access to effective treatment, care for people with HIV/AIDS, or simply a reduction in taxes.

They have also decried alleged official corruption and misappropriation of state AIDS funding.

UNITED NATIONS (AFP) - The goal of halving world poverty by 2015 is likely to be met, as a result of economic growth in China and India, but the poorest nations still need more aid and better trade opportunities, this year's Human Development Report says.

The report, by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), said the proportion of people living on less than one dollar a day in China fell from 33 percent in 1990 -- the base year for the UN's Millennium goals -- to 16 percent in 2000.

In India, which began to introduce market-based reforms more than a decade later than China, it fell from 42 percent in 1993 to 35 percent last year, the report said.

China and India together represent one-third of the world's population of six billion.

The report noted more modest progress in both countries towards other goals, such as halving by 2015 the proportion of people who suffer from hunger and those without access to safe drinking water, and reducing the under-five mortality rate by two-thirds.

"Significant progress" has also been made in Arab states, in Latin America and in the Caribbean, the report said.

In other regions, meeting the goals "remains a huge challenge," and at current rates of progress it would take sub-Saharan Africa well over a century to do so, it said.

While much of the world benefited from sustained economic growth in the past decade, 54 developing countries saw average incomes fall, the report said.

And 21 states experienced declines on the human development index (HDI), a composite measure including life expectancy, educational enrollment, adult literacy and income per person. They include Russia and six other former Soviet republics, as well as 14 African nations, among them South Africa, the country worst hit by HIV/AIDS.

"Reversals in HDI are highly unusual, as these indicators generally tend to edge up slowly over time," UNDP Administrator Mark Malloch Brown said. Only four countries declined on the index in the previous decade.

The report argues that, to reverse the declines, development strategies must focus not only on economic growth -- and on the reforms recommended by the IMF and the World Bank to achieve it -- but also on more equitable distribution of wealth and services.

"There is plenty of evidence that the goals are reachable, but we need a new vision and a new deal," Malloch Brown told reporters.

The success of China and India depended less on international organisations or donors than on the efforts of "enlightened national leadership to bring underdeveloped regions into the mainstream economy," he said.

But many smaller countries were landlocked or were vulnerable to fluctuations in the international market price of a single cash crop, he said.

The report emphasised the need for rich nations to meet the eighth Millennium goal, a commitment to match economic and institutional reform in developing countries by lowering import barriers and reducing or eliminating unsustainable debts.

BEIJING (AFP) - The first ever website giving advice on sexual health to young people has been launched in China as the population becomes more sexually active and at an earlier age, state press said.

The interactive site encourages youngsters to openly discuss their love lives and all matters related to sex, site designer Sang Qing told the China Daily.

Most Chinese people have little access to reliable and accurate information on sex due to traditional sensitivities about the issue, but the growing prevalence of AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases is worrying authorities.

Unwanted pregnancies and unsafe abortions are also a problem.

According to UN estimates, between 800,000 and 1.5 million people in China had HIV by December 2001, and the number could reach 10 million by 2010.

Most are in the 15 to 29 age range, according to the Ministry of Health.

"In China, where there is a wider gap between puberty and marriage, sexual activity outside marriage has increased and this has increased young people's vulnerability to HIV and AIDS," said Liu Liqing, the China representative of the non-profit organisation Marie Stopes International.

The launch of the website, partly sponsored by the United Nations, follows an announcement in December that China will lift a ban on condom advertisements in an effort to promote safe sex.

Family planning associations throughout China meanwhile have been asked to do a better job of teaching the rural and migrant population about safe sex to prevent HIV/AIDS.

Most rural branches of the China Family Planning Association (CFPA) lack good education programs on reproductive health and disease prevention.

The website can be found at www.youandme.net.cn.

BEIJING (Reuters) - One size fits ALL?

A bright yellow condom covered the facade of a 20-storey, phallic-shaped hotel in the southern Chinese city of Guilin to mark U.N. World Population Day on Friday in the most populous nation on the globe, the hotel manager says.

"Our hotel is very round," said the manager of the three-star Fragrant River Hotel, who declined to give her name. "The initial plan was to cover the whole building, but because the wind was so strong they could only cover the front half."

The Guilin Latex Company has applied to the publishers of the Guinness Book of World Records to recognise their giant condom, 260 feet tall and nearly 330 feet around, as the world's biggest, the Xinhua news agency said.

The company joined local birth control officials in Guilin on Friday to promote contraception, distributing free condoms and brochures to passers-by, it said.

The semi-official China News Service said the condom had cost more than 200,000 yuan (14,000 pounds) to display and carried the message: "Control population growth, pay attention to sexual health, prevent AIDS".

Despite Beijing's strict one-child policy, an attempt to halt ballooning growth of the country's 1.3 billion population, it is only in recent years that the Chinese have felt able to discuss sexual health in public.

International experts and local activists say that more publicity and government leadership was needed to avert an AIDS catastrophe in China. Beijing says that around one million of its people suffer from HIV, the virus that causes the disease.

UNITED NATIONS (AFP) - UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said that educating and informing youths was a vital and necessary tool to curb population growth and stop the spread of AIDS.

"Experience shows that educated women are more likely to marry later and have healthy and better-educated children, who will pass on these benefits from one generation to the next. Education and information also influence how many children they will have," Annan said in a message commemorating World Population Day.

He added: "If a woman were to wait until age 23, instead of age 18, to have her first child, that alone could reduce the momentum in population growth by over 40 percent."

Each day, according to the United Nations, more than 70,000 teenage girls get married, about 40,000 give birth and some 6,000 youths contract HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.

"Young people should know how the HIV virus is transmitted," Annan declared, "and how to protect themselves from infection.

"This is important everywhere but is absolutely critical in countries where infection rates are already high or quickly rising."

ENTEBBE, Uganda (AFP) - US President George W. Bush met Ugandan victims of the HIV /AIDS pandemic that is sweeping Africa and praised his host President Yoweri Museveni for helping to stem the rise of the killer disease in his country.

"It's one thing to hear about the ravages of AIDS, it's another thing to see them first hand," Bush said at a brief speech at an HIV/AIDS treatment centre, The AIDS Support Organisation (TASO), on the shores of Lake Victoria during a four-hour visit to Uganda.

At the TASO centre, Bush met a woman living with HIV and was told about anti-retroviral drugs and the importance of clean water and good health in prolonging the lives of those affected.

Bush also praised Museveni for masterminding an effort which has turned back the tide of AIDS in Uganda, where HIV infection rates have fallen from 30 percent in 1990 to five percent today, the "most dramatic decline in the world," he said.

"This is such a land of hope in the heart of Africa," Bush said. "You're leading the way here in Uganda."

"Life by life, village by village, Uganda is showing that AIDS can be defeated across Africa. However, the current efforts to oppose the disease are simply not equal to the need and America understands that."

He spoke hours after a key House of Representatives committee in Washington voted to limit spending on his signature five-year 15-billion-dollar AIDS plan for the diagnosis, treatment and prevention of AIDS in more than one dozen African and Caribbean nations.

The committee said it would provide two billion dollars in the plan's first year, rather than the three billion allowed by legislation.

Undeterred, Bush vowed : "Over the next five years, my country will spend 15 billion dollars to fight AIDS around the world."

He pledged to Africans, "You are not alone. America has decided to act."

"I believe God has called us into action. Our country has got a responsibility, we are a great nation, we are a wealthy nation, we have a responsibility to help a neighbour in need, a brother and sister in crisis."

"This is my country's pledge to the people of Africa, the people of Uganda: you are not alone in this fight," said Bush.

AIDS and Africa activists have accused Bush of devoting insufficient political muscle to forcing Congress to fully fund his anti-AIDS plan and of being more beholden to major pharmaceutical companies than to people living with HIV.

While Bush praised Uganda's policy of "emphasising abstinence and marital fidelity as well as condoms to prevent HIV transmissions," he made no mention of condoms when explaining how the 15 billion dollars would be spent.

As far as prevention was concerned, abstaining from sex and monogamy was the key.

As some activists have pointed out, abstinence is not an option for many of Africa's women, who frequently have no choice about when and if they have sex.

Museveni, who spoke before his US counterpart, saluted Bush for the envisaged 15-billion-dollar AIDS programme.

He went on to describe the African Growth and Opportunity Act, which gives qualifying countries preferential access to US markets as "the most brotherly gesture by any western government for the last 500 years."

By Matthew Green

ENTEBBE, Uganda (Reuters) - President Bush's wife read a story about Clifford the Big Red Dog to HIV-infected Ugandan children on Friday, and the youngsters sang an appeal for Washington to help combat AIDS.

About 50 children, some with stick-like limbs and hollow faces wasted by the disease, listened attentively as Laura Bush told the tale of "Clifford" -- a powerful, roguish, but loveable dog with a knack for havoc.

"I throw a stick and he brings it back to me, he makes mistakes sometimes, like when he brought back a policeman. But he's a very good watchdog," she said, delivering the popular American children's story.

In another part of the Imperial Botanical Beach Hotel on the shores of sparkling Lake Victoria, her husband held talks with Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni on the East African state's fight against HIV/AIDS, ending conflict in neighboring Congo and counter-terrorism.

The U.S. president is using a five-nation African nation tour to promote his $15 billion plan to confront the disease in Africa and the Caribbean.

About 20 children, some in orange and red striped skirts made from traditional Ugandan fabric, delivered their own message to Mrs. Bush.

"AIDS has no mercy to the youth. We all die young," they sang.

At the end of Laura Bush's brief story-telling, there was the obligatory chance to pose for photographers -- and a final chorus from the children.

"In God we trust, for God and our country," the children sang. "God bless America."

Many Ugandans are suspicious about U.S. motives in offering help in the AIDS fight.

But for an HIV-positive girl who said she was too scared of the stigma of AIDS to reveal her real name, the presidential visit to Uganda held out the promise of help.

"I think he can contribute and give us some assistance -- like improving hospitals and giving us some drugs," said the 15-year-old.

"I think that's what brought him here, to talk about how people are coping with the disease."

By Vicki Allen

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - As President Bush visited AIDS-ravaged Africa, the U.S. Senate on Thursday backed spending $3 billion next year to fight the HIV-AIDS pandemic, well above the $2 billion Bush sought in bills moving through the House of Representatives.

Saying Bush was claiming credit for the global AIDS initiative without fully paying for it, Democrats pushed to put the Senate on record in support of $3 billion to launch the five-year, $15 billion program that Congress and Bush have touted. The non-binding measure passed 78-18 with broad bipartisan support.

Democrats said they would try to add $1 billion for global HIV/AIDS to spending bills already moving through the House.

Bush, in Botswana where one in five people has HIV/AIDS and the virus afflicts 40 percent of the sexually active population, called the disease the continent's "deadliest enemy." He had made the five-year global fight against AIDS a priority in his State of the Union address in January.

He then requested $2.04 billion to launch it in the next fiscal year that starts on Oct. 1, which Democrats blasted as short of the $3 billion called for in the plan Congress approved and Bush signed in May.

Unless it backs $3 billion for next year, New Mexico Democratic Sen. Jeff Bingaman said the Senate would "essentially go along with taking credit for a $15 billion commitment while doing substantially less than that."

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Richard Lugar, an Indiana Republican, said it was important while Bush was in Africa "that there be clarification in a bipartisan way that we support the initiative that he has given to the world."

The Senate will take up spending bills in coming weeks that allocate the money for the HIV-AIDS program. In the House, the funds are in two bills being considered at different stages.

HOUSE CONSIDERS LOWER FUND

The House Appropriations foreign aid subcommittee agreed on Thursday to $1.27 billion for the global AIDS war as part of a broader $17.1 billion foreign aid bill, already $86 million more for AIDS than Bush requested.

Meanwhile the full House considered a massive bill for labor, health and education with $644 million for global AIDS, and $155 million to fight tuberculosis and other infectious diseases that prey on AIDS-weakened victims.

The total of those bills is up from the current $1.56 billion.

Rep. Nita Lowey of New York, top Democrat on the foreign aid subcommittee, said while Bush was "in Africa touting how his initiative will address these tragedies" of AIDS and poverty, his "contentions are largely a fraud" because he has not committed enough money.

But Rep. Jim Kolbe, an Arizona Republican who chairs the foreign aid subcommittee, said much of the program is just getting started, and "realistically they will not be able to spend more" than the $2 billion next fiscal year. He said he expected the full $15 billion would be spent over five years.

By Todd Zwillich

WASHINGTON (Reuters Health) - Swift action is needed to avert a brewing HIV/AIDS epidemic in southeastern Europe, according to a report released by the World Bank Thursday.

The analysis concludes that overall disease rates remain low in Romania, Bulgaria, and Croatia, but that social conditions and attitudes toward those most vulnerable to HIV infection threaten to give rise to a widespread epidemic.

Experts said that they are worried that political upheaval, an increasingly mobile population, and widespread injection drug use reminiscent of Russia and Ukraine could also help fuel the spread of HIV/AIDS throughout the three nations.

The report warns that pervasive stigma against commercial sex workers, drug users, geographically mobile ethnic minorities, and other high-risk groups threatens efforts by governments and relief organizations to head off HIV's spread.

"This sets up the stage for saying, 'it's somebody else's problem, not our problem,"' lead author Dr. Thomas E. Novotny, from the University of California at San Francisco, said.

Romania is the hardest hit of the three countries, with 12,500 known HIV infections in a population of 22 million in 2002. Many of that country's infected population are children who received tainted blood in the 1980's and early 1990's.

The report calls for widespread public educations campaigns and improved epidemiology in all three countries to help officials track in detail the spread of HIV throughout Romania. Meanwhile, infected patients in that country survive an average of five months following their diagnosis, reflecting a need for improved HIV expertise among medical personnel, it states.

Croatia recorded 341 cases in a population of nearly 4 million people in 2002, while Bulgaria had just 400 infections in a population of approximately 8 million people.

Experts said that both countries must move to enhance their public health infrastructures and attempt to extend HIV testing to areas away from the main cities.

Novotny characterized the prevalence of drug use, prostitution, and social upheaval in the three countries as being "as scary" as in Russia, where HIV infection rates have increased dramatically over the last five years.

The infection rate in Romania, Bulgaria, and Croatia is still considered very low and "we can prevent it from exploding," he said.

By Patricia Wilson

GABORONE (Reuters) - President Bush on Thursday vowed to help Botswana, which is battling the world's highest rate of HIV/AIDS, and all of Africa turn the tide on a disease he called the continent's "deadliest enemy."

"The first thing I wanted the leadership in Africa to know is the American people care deeply about the pandemic that sweeps across this continent," Bush told reporters after talks with Botswana's President Festus Mogae.

On the first two days of his five-nation African trip in Senegal and South Africa, Bush wrestled with troublespots Liberia and Zimbabwe. But his one-day Botswana visit focused on boosting trade and providing AIDS assistance to the continent where U.N. experts say 29.4 million people are HIV positive.

In Washington, the U.S. House of Representatives considered an initial $2 billion to launch Bush's five-year, $15 billion anti-AIDS program. Some Democrats called the amount inadequate and are pressing to add another $1 billion.

"As we speak, the president is in Africa touting how his initiative will address these tragedies," said Representative Nita Lowey of New York, top Democrat on the foreign aid subcommittee. But she said Bush's contentions were "largely a fraud" because he has been unwilling to commit enough money.

With a population of just 1.68 million in an area slightly smaller than Bush's home state Texas, Botswana represents the best and worst of Africa.

Thanks mainly to its diamonds, it boasts among the highest average per capita incomes on the continent -- $3,100 per year. But the mostly desert nation shares Africa's AIDS agony. One in five people has HIV/AIDS, with the virus estimated to afflict about 40 percent of its sexually active population.

"COURAGE AND RESOLVE"

"The people of this nation have the courage and the resolve to defeat this disease and you will have a partner in the United States of America," Bush said during a luncheon for 700 people.

"My country is acting to help all of Africa in turning the tide against AIDS. This is the deadliest enemy Africa has ever faced and you will not face this enemy alone."

Bush praised Mogae for "first and foremost admitting that there is a problem" and then working to put a strategy in place to prevent and treat it.

South African President Thabo Mbeki, whose country is also ravaged by the disease, has been criticized for questioning links between HIV and AIDS and resisting calls to make life-prolonging drugs available in public hospitals.

Mogae toasted Bush saying Washington had "answered his call" in the fight against AIDS by increasing funding for a joint testing and counseling program.

After Mogae's toast, the crowd rose to its feet and raised their glasses with shouts of "Pula, pula." An official from Botswana said the word literally meant rain, which in an arid country like Botswana, was associated with "anything good."

The luncheon in Gaborone was among the largest gatherings Bush has attended since he arrived in Africa on Tuesday. Businessmen, government officials and guests filed the elaborately decorated hall.

Tables were covered with leopard print fabric. Centerpieces were traditional cooking pots filled with flowers and ferns, and each table was decorated with huge ostrich egg shells. The group dined on Botswana beef and ended their meal with a chocolate dessert in the shape of an African woman's head.

NOT JUST FOR SHOW

Bush's African trip underlines a rethink on the strategic importance of the continent because of growing U.S. reliance on its oil and intelligence that al Qaeda could use vulnerable states to hide.

"We're not just here for show," Secretary of State Colin Powell told reporters. "I think the president has been able to demonstrate to Africa and the rest of the world that he considers Africa a priority of his administration."

Bush called Mogae "a great friend in the war on terror" and praised him for "sound economic management and fiscal discipline."

Botswana is part of the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), a preferential trade agreement with the United States.

Mogae told Bush AGOA was "perhaps the most significant thing" Washington had done for sub-Saharan Africa in recent decades. Asked if he had requested Bush extend the lifespan of AGOA, Mogae replied with an enthusiastic, "You bet!"

Bush was greeted in Botswana at the airport by a children's chorus and about two dozen dancers moving to marimba music in traditional costumes. Bush waded into a crowd of about 1,000 people, shaking hands two at a time.

After lunch Bush and his wife Laura climbed into the bed of a yellow pickup truck to tour the Mokolodi Nature Reserve, a predator-free home to orphaned elephants, endangered rhinos, as well as zebra, giraffes, ostrich and hippos.

"It looks a lot like Crawford, doesn't it?" Bush said, a reference to the hot and parched Texas town he calls home.

Bush and his wife left Botswana for South Africa, where they will remain before visiting Uganda and Nigeria on Friday.