BARCELONA, Spain -- The gulf in AIDS care between rich and poor loomed wider as drug-makers unveiled sophisticated new products to fight the HIV virus that will be priced out of the reach of developing countries.

Delegates to the world's biggest AIDS Conference on Spain's Catalan coast have heard good news on the steps to contain the epidemic in the West.

But it continues to spin out of control in many poor nations, where 95 percent of the infections lie.

A stream of new anti-retroviral drugs in recent years means AIDS is no longer an automatic death sentence but it continues to claim millions of lives in poor countries where expensive combination therapy is available to only a few, the Reuters reported.

As AIDS activists clamored for cheaper versions of these drugs for all, Western pharmaceutical companies held out glimpses of yet more sophisticated, and more expensive, treatments on Monday, the first day of the conference.

But progress toward the holy grail of an effective vaccine against AIDS remains slow.

California-based biotech firm Vaxgen Inc. offered a ray of hope by announcing its preventive vaccine might be available by 2005, if trial results went well.

More than 20 million people have died from aids in the last two decades and the United Nations AIDS agency, UNAIDS, says 70 million more could perish in the next 20 years.