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The United Nations General Assembly started a three-day high-level meeting Wednesday with calls for greater unity, stronger political commitment and strengthened efforts to ensure success in the global fight against the HIV/AIDS pandemic.

In his opening remarks, General Assembly President Jan Eliasson said the gathering is "no ordinary meeting" and all the 191 UN member states will take this opportunity to review their collective response to AIDS since the assembly's 2001 special session on the epidemic.

The 2001 special event, the first of its kind, adopted a landmark declaration which laid out a series of time-bound targets, including a substantial reduction of the AIDS prevalence rates among young people by 2010.

"All of us will be deciding what new commitments we need to make to ensure that 2006 goes down in history as the moment when the world set about turning the tide of this pandemic once and for all," Eliasson noted.

The Swedish foreign minister urged all participants to work together as partners for the most concrete and powerful outcome possible from the meeting.

"We need a response commensurate to the threat we face. We know what needs to be done, and we have the tools to do it," he said. "This week, we must make the necessary commitments to strengthen and deliver the response we promised."

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who took the floor after Eliasson, noted that over the last 25 years, AIDS has spread further, faster and with more catastrophic long-term effects than any other disease.

"We must apply the main lesson of the past 25 years: namely, that it is only when we work together with determination and unity of purpose that we can win against the disease," he said.

He added that such efforts require visionary leadership and unprecedented partnership, among governments, the private sector and civil society.

Annan expected that this meeting will chart the way forward, saying that "it must set us firmly on course towards getting us as close as possible to universal access to HIV prevention, treatment, care and support by 2010 -- the goal that you committed yourselves to at the World Summit last September."

"It must move us decisively towards our destination -- the Millennium Development Goal of halting, and beginning to reverse the spread of HIV and AIDS among women, men and children by 2015,"he added.

Following Annan's remarks, Kehnsami Mavasa of South Africa became the first person living with HIV to address the general assembly as she urged delegates to adopt a final declaration with real meaning.

"Your big task now is making sure that this ... is not a document of empty promises, not a mere restatement of principle, but a target for platform-based action," she said. "I ask that as you deliberate over the next two days, you'll be guided by the pain and hope which sits in our hearts as people of the world."

The meeting brought together more than a dozen heads of state and government, over 100 ministers and nearly 1,000 representatives of civil society and the private sector. It is composed of plenary sessions as well as round table and panel discussions.

Besides reviewing the progress in the fight against AIDS, the participants will also consider recommendations on how the targets in the 2001 declaration can be reached and renew political commitment. At the end of the meeting, a new political declaration will be adopted. Currently, the 191-nation General Assembly is negotiating the contents of the document.

A biennial report released Tuesday by UNAIDS, the UN agency coordinating the fight against the disease, showed that the incidence of new HIV infections appeared to have stabilized for the first time after reaching the peaks in the late 1990s.

But the report also pointed out that in general, the epidemic continues to outpace the response. "While some countries have reached key targets and milestones for 2005, many countries have failed to fulfill the pledges specified in the (2001) declaration."

According to the report, the HIV virus, which causes AIDS, has infected 65 million people since 1981 when the disease was first recognized. Of them, more than 25 million people have died.

(Xinhua News Agency June 1, 2006)