TEHRAN The United Nations General Assembly is to hold a special session next week to provide the setting for an unnecessary culture war over the moral implications of the fight against AIDS.

Disagreement over references to homosexuals, sex workers, drug users and prison inmates has stymied work since last month on a declaration which the three-day session is due to adopt.

Sue Markham, spokeswoman for the General Assembly President, Harri Holkeri, said Friday that the session's preparatory committee was expected to meet informally into the weekend, but no drafting had been done for two weeks.

Iran's Ambassador to the United Nations, Baqer Assadi, said that some paragraphs of the text have been found terribly unacceptable by quite a sizeable number of developing countries, not necessarily Muslim countries.

Cultural sensitivities had to be accommodated if agreement was to be reached, he said in an interview with AFP.

"Thank God we do not have any particular difficulties with this pandemic in Iran, for a host of reasons, mainly because of the culture -- Islamic culture and traditional culture," he said.

"In English there is a saying that you should call a spade a spade, but in certain cases, you cannot call a spade a spade; you may have to imply it, but not to say it," Assadi said.

Asked whether there was a risk that this meant adopting the weakest position, he replied, "That is a danger in every case, on every issue dealt with and addressed at the international level within the framework of multilateral negotiations.

The administrator of the UN Development Program, Mark Malloch Brown, urged both sides to avoid "a culture war" at the session, where 26 heads of state and government and ministers from more than 160 other states will speak.

He said AIDS "has shown an evil genius in the way it manages to pick on societal weakness or duplicities."

The final declaration would be the basis for the global fight against AIDS, Malloch Brown said.

If it does not recognize homosexuality, drug use or extra-marital sexual contact, it is such a fairy tale that it is going to lose huge international credibility.

"Both sides are going to have to show some realism about this," he said.