The Bush Administration's Christmas Gift to the Third World:

"Dick Cheney, the U.S. vice-president, last night blocked a global deal to provide cheap drugs to poor countries, following intense lobbying of the White House by America's pharmaceutical giants.

Faced with furious opposition from all the other 140 members of the World Trade Organization, the US refused to relax global patent laws which keep the price of drugs beyond the reach of most developing countries.

Talks at the WTO's Geneva headquarters collapsed last night after the White House ruled out a deal which would have permitted a full range of life-saving drugs to be imported to Africa, Asia and Latin-America at cut-price costs.

'The United States has announced that it cannot join the concensus'..." - Larry Elliot and Charlotte Denny, The Guardian, 12/21/2002

For the full text: http://www.commondreams.org/headlines02/1221-01.htm

Bush's Christmas gift to the third world?...A big, fat "Fuck you!"

Merry Christmas.