GEORGETOWN, Guyana -- Caribbean nations have hammered out a deal with six leading pharmaceutical firms that will give countries in the region discounts on AIDS drugs in the latest in a series of moves to give poorer nations affordable access to the medicines.

The Caribbean nations reached the deal allowing them to negotiate as a group for discounts of 70 percent to 90 percent from leading American and European companies, the Prime Minister of St. Kitts and Nevis, Denzil Douglas, told reporters at a summit of the Caricom trade bloc in Guyana.

The drug companies include Europe's Glaxosmithkline, Hoffman-la Roche, Boehringer Ingelheim, Bristol-Myers Squibb Co., Merck & Co. and Abbott Laboratories, officials said.

"They have agreed to negotiate with us as a region. The drugs become affordable and the Caribbean can begin universal treatment. It's a major coup for us," Guyana's Health Minister Dr Leslie Ramsammy told Reuters in an interview on Saturday.

Ramsammy said the deal had been negotiated during previous meetings in Jamaica and at a World Health Organization assembly in Geneva in May. The agreement will be signed during the July 7-11 AIDS Conference in Barcelona, Spain.

The announcement came as charities and activists in Barcelona called for more funds to fight AIDS, particularly in the world's poorest countries which have been worst hit by the pandemic.

New figures made public at the Barcelona conference show that 40 million people are living with the HIV virus that causes AIDS and the numbers are expected to rise to 100 million within a decade.

About 420,000 people were infected with HIV/AIDS in the Caribbean region and 1.5 million in Latin America at the end of 2001, according to the United Nations.

Anti-AIDS activists requests are that demanding drug companies allow poorer countries better access to medicines for treating the virus. Price reductions and increased competition from copycat generic drugs have already opened up affordable access to AIDS medicines for some of the poorer regions like Africa.