Fischer meets Aids activists

2003-11-01 19:41

Cape Town - German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer met with Aids activists Saturday to discuss generic drugs and funding to combat the disease now infecting nearly five million South Africans.

Zackie Achmat, leader of the activist Treatment Action Campaign group, said his meeting with Fischer was "very positive".

"The minister understands well the urgency with which we need to approach the fight against Aids," Achmat told reporters after the meeting. "He was sympathetic to the fact that we need more funding."

Achmat, whose group has lobbied the government to make Aids drugs available through the public health system, said he and Fischer also discussed German and European Union efforts to make generic drugs more affordable.

Fischer, who is on a three-nation tour of Africa, said also praised South Africa for making a largely peaceful transition from the apartheid era into a multiracial democracy, and likened it to the unification of West and East Germany in 1990.

"Germany and South Africa are very good examples for a peaceful overthrow of unlawful regimes by democratic means," Fischer told students and teachers at a school in Cape Town.

Fischer was scheduled to leave for Berlin later on Saturday.

- AP