Next week he will give details of the Aids funding and call on the international community to scale

Next week he will give details of the Aids funding and call on the international community to scale up its efforts against the disease.The move reflects growing international concern about the potential of the disease to destroy the young, economically active populations of developing nations. If we are honest we should have done more sooner.” Spending on Aids programmes had increased sevenfold since 1997, making Britain the second largest donor to the developing world. By 2005-06, spending in Africa would rise to £1bn a year, Mr Benn said. Lower prices for anti-retroviral drugs, and the recognition that whole regions of the world face economic ruin unless the death rate can be stemmed, led to the change of heart.Mr Benn said yesterday: “Generations are being wiped out by the disease. Teachers are dying faster than they can be trained and people are being removed from working the land. Mr Benn said: “We have made sure treatment is up there alongside prevention and caring for people with Aids.

We have an opportunity now because of the dramatic fall in the price of Aids drugs.”Under Clare Short, Mr Benn’s predecessor, who resigned over the Iraq war, the Department for International Development backed prevention of HIV but did not support treatment programmes. We need an open, reforming, flexible Europe, changing to meet the global economic realities it faces.”Any of the 15 EU member states, or the 10 countries due to join next year, can veto the constitution.The Brussels summit, scheduled for 12 and 13 December, should agree the final text of the new constitutional treaty, butobservers have predicted that negotiations could drag into next year.. Britain will fund Aids treatments for the developing world for the first time, instead of focusing exclusively on prevention, in response to the scale of the epidemic in sub-Saharan Africa and elsewhere. In doing so, he made us sound like the Tories,” he said.Gordon Brown, the Chancellor, launched his own offensive yesterday in Britain’s attempt to convince its EU partners that Tony Blair is not for turning in his opposition to a European constitution that breaches his “red lines”.Asked whether the UK might veto the draft constitution, Mr Brown replied: “I am standing up for British interests, and what is in Britain’s interest is in Europe’s interest. Even they loved it.Punk Aid don’t just want a hit, they want that top brick off the chimney: the No 1.At any given point in time, the charts are usually a tightly controlled thing – much more so than the average person realises Payola, as such, doesn’t exist I am obliged to say that. We haven’t decided that a deal is impossible.”Another Government source was more forthright.

“We all know we have to send a shot across their bows, but Jack went nuclear. One Downing Street source said: “If yesterday was meant to emphasise we don’t take the summit for granted, then fine, we are there But equally we don’t go into it expecting to fail It is going to be a difficult summit. It is important to underline to the public and our partners our determination that our red lines remain We believe that will happen We still believe a deal is possible. If there were no agreement it would complicate all sorts of things, but plainly life will go on under existing treaties,” he told a media briefing on Monday. The Foreign Secretary was rewarded with lurid headlines in Eurosceptic newspapers, which declared that Britain was preparing for failure in the talks on the blueprint.Downing Street accepts the tactical need to signal its determination to stick by its so-called “red lines” on the constitution. These include demands for changes to the text on defence and foreign affairs, and to proposals that could lead to an end of the national veto in limited areas of tax, social security policy and energy policy, as well as the harmonisation of criminal procedural law.However, Mr Straw’s remarks, which came hours before Mr Blair and President Jacques Chirac stressed their hopes for progress on the issue, infuriated senior pro-European figures in the Government. “This is in the category of highly desirable, but it’s not in the category of absolutely necessary.