UN special envoy for AIDS in Africa, Stephen Lewis, on Wednesday called for rich nations to cancel the debts of the world's poorest countries to help fight against AIDS and HIV infections.

There is an "urgent need to deal with AIDS in the context of poverty," he said at a news conference ahead of the XVI International AIDS Conference in Toronto.

Lewis blasted G8 leaders, saying the leading industrial nations' promises last year at a summit in Scotland for more debt relief and aid for Africa were "unraveling" or "have already been betrayed."

Only one-third of the countries most burdened by AIDS, debt and poverty could expect modest debt cancellation by mid-2006, and donors have committed less than half the funds needed to meet poverty reduction and HIV prevention targets, he said.

G8 countries had agreed to provide 0.7 percent of their gross national income for development assistance.

Lewis challenged conference host Canada to set a binding timetable to reach that target "rather than lapsing into the banalities and irrelevance to which the Canadian government seems so severely addicted."

Canada has endorsed the 0.7 percent target, but refuses to set a timetable, he said, noting that Britain has said it would reach it by 2013, France by 2012, Germany and Italy by 2015.

"That's not only delinquent but it is, as people have said, hypocritical," Lewis said.

Some 95 percent of new infections this year or five million HIV-AIDS cases are expected to appear in developing countries and those in transition, according to Joanne Csete of the Global Treatment Access Group.

She linked HIV transmission in many of these countries to "women's second class status and violations of the human rights of gay and bisexual men, sex workers, people who use drugs, prisoners and former prisoners, and migrants."

As well, most of the 40 million people worldwide already living with HIV and AIDS reside in poor countries, said Gerry Barr, co-chair of Make Poverty History.

"The connection between global poverty and the pandemic are inescapable," Barr said. "Those who are poor, those who are chronically malnourished do not do well in the struggle against HIV-AIDS."

"Poverty fuels the aids pandemic and it makes millions even more poor," he said.