Annan Urges World Leaders in AIDS Fight

In this photo released by the United Nations, a number of people who will participate in 2006 United Nations High Meeting on Aids open red umbrellas in the shape of a red ribbon: the symbol of the world wide struggle against HIV/Aids, in a ceremony on the North lawn of United Nations headquarters in New York, Tuesday, May 30. 2006. (AP Photo/The United Nations, Mark Garten) (Mark Garten - AP)

The three-day meeting comes a week before the 25th anniversary of the first documented AIDS cases _ June 5, 1981. It is meant to review promises made in a similar conference in 2001, and chart a course to provide universal access for AIDS prevention and treatment.

Civil society groups said they feared that there was not a real sense of urgency among diplomats at the meeting to put forward specific proposals or shed outdated ideas about the virus.

"Even though AIDS should be everybody's problem and issue, and everyone should care about it, I'm sorry to say that for the most part the diplomats in this building either don't care or don't know," said Adrienne Germain, president of the International Women's Health Coalition.

Most of the targets from 2001 have not been met. Among the biggest failures was the so-called "3 by 5" target _ of getting treatment to 3 million poor people infected with AIDS by the end of last year.

Peter Piot, head of the U.N. AIDS agency, said he hoped the meeting will generate new funding to fight the disease, which needs between $18 billion and $22 billion each year to be fought effectively. It gets about $10 billion a year now.

"We need to commit to a strategic approach that recognizes AIDS both as a long-term priority as well as an emergency that requires an immediate response," Piot said. "In other words, we need to run a marathon at the pace of a sprint."

Yet many nations, including the United States, have resisted setting large targets, and appeared unlikely to change their stance. The U.S. delegation, for example, wanted to strike language from a final declaration that would call for universal access to treatment by 2010.

Britain's development secretary, Hilary Benn, planned to call for poor nations to develop 10-year plans to fight HIV/AIDS, the British Foreign Office said in a news release. Benn will also ask the international community to "back these plans with long-term and predictable finance."