Ireland has become the first country in the world to back efforts by former United States president, Mr Bill Clinton, to improve treatment for AIDS victims in Third World countries.
In an agreement signed yesterday between Mr Clinton's foundation and the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, Ireland will pay for the treatment of up to 500,000 people diagnosed with HIV/AIDS in Mozambique.
Under the deal, Mr Clinton's team will organise ways to best deliver aid and negotiate cheap prices with major drugs companies for the anti-retroviral drugs needed to stem the disease's advance.
Mr Clinton told journalists: "My foundation is not looking for monuments here.
"The Irish money will not go to the foundation. We are working with the Irish Government.
"We will help to come up with a plan to spend the money. But the plan has to be approved by the Irish Government and health experts. The Mozambique government has to sign up and to commit to it," he said.
The money for the Mozambique project will come from Ireland's existing overseas development budget to combat AIDS, which was launched by the Taoiseach following the United Nations' HIV/AIDS.
The announcement was made hours after Trócaire chairman, Bishop John Kirby, criticised the Government for failing to meet its target to give 0.7 per cent Gross Domestic Product to Third World countries.
Rejecting the criticism, the Taoiseach said: "I have no problem with someone pointing out where we are, but they should also point out that we are the seventh largest donor in statistical terms in the OECD.
"We are right up there at the highest level. I think this country is doing extraordinarily well. I do not think that we have a case to answer, with the greatest of respect to Bishop Kirby," Mr Ahern said.
Interjecting, Mr Clinton agreed. "I would like to make a defence. It is the job of religious leaders to hold us to absolute standards, but politicians like me can offer comparative judgments.
"Almost no country is doing as well as Ireland. I think the Irish Government and Irish people may want to share their religious leaders' admonition to keep reaching for higher standards, but, in the meantime, they should take a good deal of satisfaction and pride that in relative terms you are doing better than anybody else," Mr Clinton said.
He sharply rejected charges that politicians globally have only begun to tackle Africa's AIDS crisis since U2's Bono and other celebrities became involved: "No, I don't think that that is fair.
"I think the fact that we have a citizen of the world like Bono, who is both famous and smart, helps us to do things. He is an enormously gifted political person," he said.
Politicians have always been behind "the advocates, voices of conscience", he acknowledged. "But I don't think you should assume that the politicians who come along in their wake are insincere." Illustrating the crisis caused by the march of AIDS in Mozambique, Mr Clinton said: "There are more teachers dying every year than can be trained to teach the young people.
"Seventy per cent of all hospital beds are taken up by people who have HIV and AIDS. Fifteen per cent of young people are infected. That is 1½ million people.
"There are places where they cannot bring in the farm crop because there aren't enough young people to go into the fields to harvest it. Today, there are only a few thousand people receiving treatment."
Mr Clinton's latest involvement in the fight against AIDS was sparked after a 1998 visit to Africa when he observed major differences between the abilities of different countries to cope.
Today, the William Jefferson Clinton Foundation is collaborating with the Harvard AIDS Institute, Columbia University Medical School, McKinsey business consultants and others.
