PANA Qadafi Accuses CIA of Spreading Aids Virus Panafrican News Agency (Dakar) April 28, 2001 Posted to the web April 28, 2001 Abuja, Nigeria The Libyan revolutionary leader, Col. Moammar Kadhafi Friday accused the US Central Intelligence Agency or CIA of being responsible for the spread of HIV/AIDS throughout the world. "The issue today, which no one dares address, is the origin of the virus; namely who created HIV/AIDS. The door is totally closed. Even experts and doctors present here in Abuja have not addressed that ticklish and very hot issue," Kadhafi observed. Speaking in Abuja at the closing ceremony of the African summit on HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and other infectious diseases, he said, "diseases like tuberculosis are leprosy are known since a long time". According to him, "CIA laboratories had lost control over the virus which was tested on black Haitian prisoners. And it's not Kadhafi who says so, but this is a truth divulged by scientists." He refuted "the notion" according to which the disease was caused by monkeys from Africa as utterly false and baseless". "Our monkeys have always lived with us while the disease only emerged in the last two decades. It's a recent disease that dates back to the 1980s". To support his revelations, Kadhafi disclosed how health personnel contaminated 400 Libyan children with HIV/AIDS in the paediatrics ward of the Benghazi University Teaching Hospital (1,050km east of Tripoli). "The defendants - one doctor and five nurses - admitted that they were separately requested by the CIA and MOSSAD (the Israeli intelligence service) to contaminate Libyan children", Kadhafi explained to the astonishment of the summiteers. One doctor and five nurses of Bulgarian nationality were arrested and jailed for several months now in a Libyan prison after having been accused of contaminating Libyan children with HIV/AIDS. He described the act as "a catastrophe and odious crime. We will file the case to WHO and the International Committee of the Red Cross and Red Crescent". Several of these children were transferred to European countries for more in-depth investigations. A specialised centre in Paris had confirmed their contamination by the virus. The case was examined by the criminal court of Tripoli. Kadhafi said the trial would have an international scope similar to that of the Lockerbie affair. Kadhafi also accused capitalist companies of engaging in "odious trade" by sacrificing the lives of sufferers of HIV/AIDS and other infectious diseases to make maximum profits. He further accused those companies of prolonging the life of the virus and delaying the marketing of drugs in a bid to gain more profits at the expense of the millions of persons victimised by the pandemic. He did not rule out the possibility that major western pharmaceutical companies and firms end up formulating an efficient vaccine and a treatment for that virus. But, he said, "they have preferred to exploit this human catastrophe worldwide in order to enrich themselves". Kadhafi criticised western countries of "spending billions of dollars on weapons of massive destruction which kill hundreds of thousands of people while relatively little money is being spent on AIDS control". These capitalists, he insisted, "seem to take some pleasure in seeing us suffer". And the Libyan leader emphasised that "HIV/AIDS is not a disease strictly confined to Africa. On the contrary, he said, it's a pandemic that strikes the whole planet even if it develops quicker in Africa because of poverty, debts and other social evils colonialists have plunged us into". Kadhafi later expressed satisfaction over the deposition with the OAU on Thursday of the 36th ratification document of the African Union. He urged African states to primarily rely on themselves and on their own means to fight the AIDS pandemic. Africa, he said, should "assume its responsibilities with courage and save its riches including diamonds, gold, oil, gas, fruits, water to find the necessary drug and save its sons". "Africa is today on the right track. It has started, with the coming into force of the African Union, its historic march for progress and development", Kadhafi added. _________________________________________________ KOMINFORM P.O. Box 66 00841 Helsinki Phone +358-40-7177941 Fax +358-9-7591081 http://www.kominf.pp.fi General class struggle news: [EMAIL PROTECTED] subscribe mails to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Geopolitical news: [EMAIL PROTECTED] subscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] __________________________________________________
