CIA/Drug Co. Plot in S. Africa ‹‹‹‹‹‹‹‹‹‹‹‹‹‹‹ CIA and drug firms out to get me, Mbeki says Chris McGreal in Johannesburg Friday October 6, 2000 The Guardian The South African president, Thabo Mbeki, claims that the CIA is working covertly with American drug companies to discredit him because he is challenging the world economic order and threatening profits by questioning the link between HIV and Aids. The Guardian's sister paper in Johannesburg, the Mail and Guardian, reports that Mr Mbeki painted a picture of an international plot against him to a meeting of 200 African National Congress cabinet ministers and MPs last week. The president said that criticism of his Aids policy was a foretaste of foreign attempts to undermine his government to protect the existing balance of economic power. He called on MPs to resist the campaign. Mr Mbeki said that his advisers were seeking to discover who was spreading the idea that he was "deranged", itself a part of the conspiracy against him. On Wednesday the ANC's national executive committee alleged that press criticism of Mr Mbeki was part of "a massive propaganda onslaught against the ANC, its president and its government". The government has begun a public relations offensive to deflect criticism of Mr Mbeki's Aids policy by focusing on his statement to parliament a fortnight ago that government policy was "based on the the sis that HIV causes Aids", and by admitting that he may have caused confusion. But Mr Mbeki angered some of his own MPs by once again raising the issue in private. He told them that because big western drug firms stood to benefit from treating HIV infections it was in their interests to insist that the virus was the cause of Aids. He then said that the CIA was actively promoting the belief that there was a link to protect the profits of companies making anti-retroviral drugs. But he said the CIA's campaign went further because it was also aimed at discrediting him as an effective voice for reform of a world economic order working at Washington's whim. Mr Mbeki told MPs that there was a link between the struggle for a better economic deal for developing countries and the "propaganda" put out "covertly" by the CIA and drug companies. But the Mail and Guardian quoted one ANC MP as pouring scorn on Mr Mbeki's address. "We have a president who is arguing against his own government's policy," the MP said. "And he talks like this after telling us he knows talking like this has caused confusion in the past and hurt the campaign against HIV-Aids." To back his claims, the president said that a large drug company, which he did not name, had confessed to him that it had abandoned the search for an anti-Aids vaccine but would not admit it, fearing a collapse in its share price. Mr Mbeki spoke approvingly of a conference of about 60 dissident scientists held in Uganda last month which said there was no scientific proof that HIV caused Aids. He also said that reports that Uganda had had significant success in the fight against Aids was untrue, despite its president, Yoweri Museveni, being praised for bringing down HIV infection rates. © Copyright Guardian Media Group plc. 2000
