Nafis Sadik, the UN's special envoy for HIV/AIDS in Asia and the Pacific, urged regional leaders to stop living in a "make-believe world" and adopt extraordinary responses to fight the epidemic's rampant spread.

"Despite many, many expressions of commitment to urgent action against HIV-AIDS, it has become clear to me that national and local authorities are not yet convinced," Sadik told a gathering of ministers and officials from members of the UN's Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP).

"We have simply not seen the extraordinary responses that ESCAP members need to turn back the infection in the Asia-Pacific region," Sadik said.

"HIV/AIDS is the most serious challenge to development that ESCAP countries have ever faced, the more serious because it has not yet shown its full power for destruction. But African countries have seen the full, appalling impact...

"It could happen here," she added.

Asia-Pacific is home to 60 percent of the world's population and includes the world's two most populous nations, China and India.

Seven million infections have already been recorded in the region, with one million new infections recorded last year alone, she said.

China, where knowledge of HIV prevention is poor, reported a 17 percent increase in the number of new infections in the first half of 2003, according to Sadik, and it can expect 10 million cases by 2010, the UN estimates.

The number of carriers in India, where there are now nearly 4 million carriers, is expected to skyrocket up to 20-25 million by 2010.

"We urge moral behaviour, but we make policy and policies must be realistic. Let us not live in a make-believe world where HIV/AIDS is someone else's problem," Sadik said.

"It may threaten Asia-Pacific's prospects for continued economic and social development, if countries and the international community do not act."

Sadik said leaders, although frequently paying lip service to fighting the deadly disease, were failing to take action.

"Some leaders have also buried themselves in the illusion that HIV/AIDS is not really an Asian problem: that the infection will somehow restrict itself to the high-risk groups," she warned.

"This is a denial of reality and ESCAP countries must tackle it head-on."

Sadik also urged donors to work to better coordinate their programmes, which have mushroomed in number but have improved the fight against HIV/AIDS.

The World Health Organisation has said that the Asia-Pacific region is set to become the epicentre of the global pandemic in the next decade, while the US has already warned that China and India are facing an AIDS "catastrophe".