'N-deal no lynchpin in Indo-US ties'

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Keywords: Clinton, India

New Delhi: Former US president Bill Clinton talks about emerging Indo-US ties, Clinton Foundation's HIV fight in India, the nuclear threat from Iran and other issues an exclusive interview with Vidya Shankar Aiyar of CNN-IBN.

Vidya Shankar: President Clinton, welcome to the programme. You know, there is the bird flu that has affected India also now. Did you have eggs for breakfast today?

Bill Clinton: I didn't today, but I often do.

Vidya Shankar: Is your foundation doing any work with regard to this problem? You have done a lot of work for HIV-AIDS, what about infectious diseases? You have won an award as well for this.

Bill Clinton: We haven't so far, because I don't think at the present time there is anything for us to do. I think right now, what we have got to do is get the medication up to sufficient volumes and work out the distribution network.

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	Interview - Part I
	Interview - Part II
	Interview - Part III

So, far, everybody has been really worried about that and I consider that to be a very healthy thing.

I think that the terrific worries that we have about bird flu and the enormous publicity that every known case gets, whether it is in Romania or here or anywhere else, gives us a chance to avoid repeating the great influenza of 1918-1920,which killed somewhere between 2500 million people. We can do that. But there is nothing yet from my foundation to do.

Vidya Shankar: Your foundation has been doing a lot of work for HIV-AIDS and now you are here in India with this programme. You have visited the Cipla factories in Goa and you have been walking around the All India Institute of Medical Sciences. What is your reaction to having visited here now?

Bill Clinton: Well, most of our partners in providing the least expensive high quality retroviral medicine in the world are Indians. There is Cipla, Ranbaxy, Hetro and one South African partner Aspen. Increasingly, with our testing work we have other partners in Europe and even in the United States.

But the core of this is to getting the entire retroviral medicines at the lowest possible price. I saw this incredibly modern Cipla factory yesterday, where they are making three pills in one - triple therapy treatment - as well as separate pills, and where they are making for a lot of the medicines for children, which is a new interest of mine.