Minister, Distinguished Delegates, I am very pleased to join you today on behalf of UNAIDS, the Joint United Nations Program that brings together in a focus on AIDS our eight co-sponsoring organizations—the International Labor Organization was officially signed on as our most recent co-sponsor, less than two weeks ago. [TONE]//[TONE] The HIV epidemic around the globe is continuing to grow—every day, the world sees 15,000 new HIV infections and 8,000 deaths as a result of AIDS. Month by month, AIDS spreads even further. At the beginning of October, a new report was issued by the collaborative group, known as "Monitoring the AIDS Pandemic". This report on trends in the epidemic in Asia and the Pacific noted that in Indonesia, for example, HIV is beginning to emerge strongly where for many years it has been absent. [TONE]∥[TONE]