World Health Boss Sees
Deal on Anti-Smoking Pact

GENEVA (Reuters) - The UN's top health official on Wednesday backed a proposed new text for an international pact against smoking, saying it should win wide support and lead to a treaty with "muscle."

But activists were skeptical about the latest bid in the World Health Organization's long search for an accord to wean the world off a habit that kills up to five million people a year.

Clive Bates of the British-based Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) said that the draft, to be put to a sixth and final negotiating session of WHO states next month in Geneva, "falls way short" of what was needed to tackle the problem.

The text, drawn by head of the treaty negotiating committee, ambassador Luis Felipe Seixas Correa of Brazil, recognizes that the "spread of the tobacco epidemic is a global problem that calls for the widest possible international cooperation."

In 38 articles, the proposed treaty spells out steps the UN health agency's 192 member states should take to "restrict" tobacco advertising, fight cigarette smuggling and deter young people from starting to smoke.

"With this new text, we have a solid basis for a treaty that, when adopted, will protect public health," said WHO Director-General Gro Harlem Brundtland in a statement.

"I am confident we can craft a convention which both has muscle and that can be accepted by all," said the former Norwegian premier, who has made the fight against smoking the top priority of her five-year term that ends in May.

DEATH TOLL TO RISE

Talks on the planned Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), the first international health treaty under WHO auspices, were launched in 1999 and are due to end with formal acceptance of the new treaty at the May WHO general assembly.

The world health body has warned that if nothing is done to curb smoking, annual tobacco-related deaths will reach 10 million by the late 2020s, with more than 70% of victims living in developing countries.

Seixas Correa said that the new draft took account of points raised during the last negotiating session in October, when activists accused Germany, the United States and Japan, all home to powerful tobacco companies, of seeking to weaken the pact.

The text opts for restrictions on advertising in place of the previous obligation on states to move toward a total ban, something which the United States and Germany said they could not do because of constitutional safeguards on free speech.

There is also no longer any reference to the "phasing out" of sponsorship of sporting events by tobacco companies, another of the measures that health officials had long seen as crucial to an effective anti-smoking campaign.

On the other hand, activists noted that the text removed all reference to states having to ensure that anti-tobacco measures were compatible with existing international accords on free trade, something that could have limited their room for action.

It also spelled out the minimum space-30%--that any cigarette packet must devote to anti-smoking warnings.

"It is disappointing but it is still better than nothing," said Bates.

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