LONDON, England (AP) - Britain marked World AIDS Day by announcing it was contributing £27.5 million (US$48 million or euro40 million) to the global fight against the disease.

Prime Minister Tony Blair's government said £20 million (US$35 million or euro29 million) would go to the International Aids Vaccine Initiative and £7.5 million (US$13 million or euro11 million) towards developing microbicides that could protect against HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.

"The AIDS crisis represents a human tragedy for the more than 40 million men, women and children suffering from the disease around the world," Blair said in a statement.

"As president of the G8 and the EU, the UK is showing leadership in the global fight against AIDS through a strong commitment to increased prevention and treatment."

At a summit in Scotland in July, the G8 group of rich industrial nations pledged to work towards universal access to AIDS treatment by 2010.

A committee of British lawmakers, however, expressed concern that efforts to fight the disease could be held back by the "increasingly moralistic" tone of AIDS prevention programmes implemented by the United States.

The United States has been accused of backing programmes that encourage sexual abstinence at the expense of those that distribute condoms to people at risk of AIDS.

Washington's increasing focus on abstinence "does not tally with an evidence-based approach" to fighting AIDS, the House of Commons International Development Committee said in a report.

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