Tuesday, August 22 2006 17:29 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Cape Town: United States senator Barack Obama joined the chorus of criticism of South Africa's response to the AIDS pandemic, and called for some "clinical truth telling'

Obama, the only African American senator, said, "There needs to be a sense of urgency and an almost clinical truth telling about AIDS in this country for the problem to be solved."

"But (it has to be) addressed in an unambiguous fashion," he told reporters in Cape Town yesterday.

"There should not be a contradiction or conflict between traditional values and modern science," he added.

Obama said he was hoping to meet with South African President Thabo Mbeki, who has been under pressure to axe his controversial health minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang after she took a beating over the government's AIDS policies at a global summit in Toronto.

The United Nations' special envoy on AIDS in Africa, Stephen Lewis, lambasted Pretoria for its response to HIV/AIDS, affecting some 5.5 million South Africans.

Lewis blasted South Africa's AIDS policies as wrong, immoral (and) indefencible, saying they were theories more worthy of a lunatic fringe than of a concerned and compassionate state.

The South African stand at the Toronto summit casued outrage by displaying beetroot, garlic and lemons alongside anti-AIDS medicines. Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang advocates the quirky diet to fight HIV. And Mbeki himself came under fire several years ago after questioning the link between HIV and AIDS.