Bangkok, Thailand ? A potential trade agreement between Thailand and the United States could derail this country’s production of inexpensive AIDS drugs and imperil the future of an anti-HIV program that is widely considered a model for countries throughout Asia, the group Doctors Without Borders said Monday.

“If the Thais sign such an agreement, they will have to close down their generic drug production,” Paul Cawthorne, head of the group’s Thailand organization, said in a news conference. “Trade rules are the biggest threat (to the fight against AIDS),” he said.

Thailand is one of the few countries that manufacture generic versions of anti-HIV drugs de-veloped by U.S. manufacturers.

Thailand began re-searching manufacturing techniques for the drugs in the early 1990s and was preparing to market a generic version of the drug didanosine when Bristol-Myers Squibb Co., the drug’s manufacturer, served notice that it held a valid patent on the drug. The Thai government was ready to accede, but Doctors Without Borders urged it to fight the claim.

A free-trade agreement, meant to expand business exchanges between the United States and Thailand, would incorporate language reinstating the patents, in an effort to protect U.S. pharmaceutical companies.

The Bush administration has argued that the generic versions of the drug are potentially unsafe and not as effective as the branded versions, a claim most experts dispute.

Meanwhile, scientists, activists and policy-makers at the International AIDS Conference also took issue with President Bush’s policy of abstinence as a trusted weapon in the fight against AIDS, dismissing it as a “serious setback” in efforts to control the pandemic.

Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni was the only big-name speaker at the International AIDS Conference to support Washington’s ABC policy: Abstinence, Being faithful and Condoms, in that order.

Museveni said loving relationships based on trust were crucial, and “the principle of condoms is not the ultimate solution.”

AIDS activists throw paint on a poster of President Bush during a demonstration at the 15th International AIDS Conference in Bangkok, Thailand. Several U.S. policies on the world fight against AIDS drew criticism Monday at the conference.

“In some cultures sexual intercourse is so elaborate that condoms are a hindrance,” he told a plenary session.

However, U.S. Rep. Barbara Lee and other delegates urged the world’s rich countries to spend more on condoms and other HIV-fighting programs for the developing world.

“In an age where 5 million people are newly infected each year and women and girls too often do not have the choice to abstain, an abstinence-until-marriage program is not only irresponsible, it’s really inhumane,” said Lee, a California Democrat.