By From News Services

Sunday, August 31, 2003; Page A16

GENEVA, Aug. 30 -- Following an impassioned appeal from Africa, the World Trade Organization today sealed a deal to allow poor countries to import cheap copies of patented drugs to treat killer diseases such as AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis.

"All people of good will and good conscience will be very happy today with the decision that the WTO members have made," Kenyan Ambassador Amina Chawahir Mohamed said. "It's especially good news for the people of Africa who desperately need access to affordable medicine."

The pact resolves a key dispute between the United States and poor countries less than two weeks before trade ministers meet in Cancun, Mexico, to revive global-trade talks. It opens the way for the 146-nation WTO to make progress in Cancun on issues such as farm subsidies.

The United States, which had been concerned that drug companies could lose control of patent rights, had made concessions earlier in the week that broke an eight-month deadlock on the issue.

The final breakthrough, after six days of talks, followed a meeting Friday during which representatives of many African countries pleaded with other diplomats to stop trying to win last-minute advantages for their own nations.

In a joint statement, the representatives noted that nearly 2.2 million Africans have died from AIDS and other killer diseases since the issue became deadlocked on Dec. 16.

"For us, the request by the African countries was a decisive factor. All of us couldn't fail to be touched by that," Brazilian Ambassador Luiz Felipe de Seixas Correa said.

Under the accord, global patent rules will be loosened to allow drug makers in countries including India and Brazil to sell inexpensive copies to poor nations such as Zambia, which is battling AIDS and malaria. Sub-Saharan Africa is home to almost 30 million of the 42 million people worldwide with AIDS or HIV.

"This is a historic agreement for the WTO," Director-General Supachai Panitchpakdi said. "The final piece of the jigsaw has fallen into place, allowing poorer countries to make full use of the flexibilities in the WTO's intellectual-property rules in order to deal with the diseases that ravage their people."

But groups campaigning to give poor people better access to lifesaving drugs criticized the agreement.

"Today's deal was designed to offer comfort to the U.S. and the Western pharmaceutical industry," said Ellen 't Hoen of the medical aid group Doctors Without Borders. "Unfortunately it offers little comfort for poor patients. Global patent rules will continue to drive up the price of medicines."

WTO diplomats had nearly reached a deal by 1 a.m. Friday after a marathon session, but it quickly fell through. Negotiators said the deal had stumbled over demands by some countries to make statements before formal approval. Those statements can be used to make "reservations," or spell out limits countries will place on their adherence to the accord.

Some developing countries said they would only accept the pact on the understanding that measures to prevent smuggling would not add to the price of the drugs or make it more difficult for needy countries to get them.

Under WTO rules, countries facing public-health crises have the right to override patents on vital drugs and order copies from cheaper, generic suppliers. However, until now they could only order from domestic producers -- a useless loophole for the huge majority of developing countries that have no domestic pharmaceutical industry.

The compromise worked out by the United States earlier this week represented a reversal for the Bush administration from December, when it blocked a deal. American drug makers including Pfizer Inc. and Merck & Co. were concerned any loosening of patent rules may have been interpreted to allow nations such as Brazil to override patents on medicines for noninfectious diseases, such as asthma or cancer, and flood European and U.S. markets with cheap generics.

To satisfy those concerns, the document was accompanied by the new statement setting out conditions for using the measure.

The statement says rules allowing countries to override patents "should be used in good faith to protect public health . . . not be an instrument to pursue industrial or commercial policy objectives."

It calls for special measures to prevent drugs being smuggled back to rich country markets, including special packaging or different-colored tablets.