This news story is from the AP, Chris Tomlinson...

U.S. President George W. Bush's administration's international AIDS policies have worsened a condom shortage in Uganda and could lead to an increase in the East African country's HIV infection rate, a top UN envoy said Monday.

Stephen Lewis, the UN Secretary General's special envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa and a former Canadian ambassador to the UN, said U.S. cuts in funding for condoms and a new emphasis on promoting abstinence had contributed to a condom shortage in Uganda, one of the few countries which had previously succeeded in reducing its HIV rate.

``There is no doubt in my mind that the condom crisis in Uganda is being driven by (U.S. programs),'' Lewis said in a teleconference sponsored by health and human rights groups. ``To impose a dogma-driven policy that is fundamentally flawed is doing damage to Africa.''

A shortage of condoms in Uganda has developed because both the government and its primary donor for HIV prevention, the United States, have allowed condom supplies to dwindle while allocating an increasing proportion of funding for HIV programs to religious groups that oppose condom use, said a report by the Center for Health and Gender Equity.

The group said that while Uganda needs between 120 million and 150 million condoms a year, only 32 million have been distributed since October.

Ugandan officials have denied that there is a problem or a deviation in policy.

``It is not true that there is a condom shortage,'' Health Minister Jim Muhwezi. ``There seems to be a co-ordinated smear campaign by those who do not want to use any other alternative simultaneously with condoms against AIDS.''

Muhwezi said he was co-ordinating Uganda's HIV prevention strategy with the U.S. government, but insisted that condoms remain an important part of their HIV prevention strategy. He said the recent discovery of problems with the quality of condoms imported into Uganda had led to a disruption in supply, but that the problem was sorted out.

Jodi Jacobson, the executive director of the Center for Health and Gender Equity, said all of the evidence collected in Uganda by her group had found that Ugandans had seen a 300 per cent increase in condom prices and free condoms could not be found at the normal distribution points.

Lewis and Jacobson also said that a campaign to discredit condoms and promote abstinence by Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni's wife, was providing misinformation about HIV that could cause an increase in the HIV rate.

``Religious fundamentalists, some financially supported by the U.S. government and the Office of the First Lady Janet Museveni, have become prominent in attacking condoms and those who distribute them,'' the centre's report said.

Muhwezi said the first lady could not be expected to promote condom use.

``Her role is to tell the young people to abstain. She cannot tell young people to use condoms. She is a mother,'' he said.