The two organizations said they will meet in Norway next month with experts and advocates to figure out how to deliver the drugs to people who are dying by the thousands each week. Under the proposed plan, the WTO would work to negotiate patent laws with drug companies and member nations, while the WHO would raise money to pay for production of the drugs and would administer their distribution.

The announcement marks an unprecedented response from drug companies to humanitarian pleas that millions of people not be left to die while life-prolonging medicines sit bottled up on pharmacy shelves. Approximately 70 percent of the world's AIDS cases are in Africa. The WHO estimates that 25 million Africans are infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. Currently only 10,000 of them are receiving drug treatment to stem the progression of the disease.

"The world is ready to move on from squabbling about patent issues," said Dr. Nils Daulaire, head of the Global Health Council, which is organizing the April 8-11 meeting in Hosbjor, Norway, titled "Differential Pricing and Financing of Essential Drugs."

"This is not aimed at undercutting pharmaceutical patents," said Daulaire, formerly the top international health official at the U.S. Agency for International Development. Indeed, drug firms plan to send representatives to the meeting to ensure they retain their profitable drug patents in the West, where better-off patients and private and public health insurance plans have been paying full price.

Drug firms argue that they need to recoup the hundreds of millions of dollars they invest in research for these drugs and that they need revenue to create the drugs and vaccines of the future. Rather than abolish patent rights for AIDS drugs, participants in the Norway meeting will try to create a system of licensing the right to produce generic versions at a few cents per pill for those unable to afford the current cost in America and Europe.

The meeting will include representatives of some of the 39 pharmaceutical companies that recently went to court in South Africa to try to prevent distribution of generic drugs produced without permission from the patent holders.

An official with one of the organizations involved in the meeting, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that the pharmaceutical companies are torn between the desire to help people and the fear of what a weakening of their patents -- the fundamental basis of their revenue -- could mean for their business.

The official said that after pressure from the press, the companies finally agreed to take steps to let go of their patents under negotiated terms. "They want to get out from under the image of holding a glass of water while someone is dying of thirst," the official said.

Also speaking on condition of anonymity, a senior official of one of the involved organizations said that the giant pharmaceutical companies finally made the talks possible in the past three weeks by surrendering their legal battles in South Africa and elsewhere to keep all their patents and profits.

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