WASHINGTON, June 2 -- Wealthy Group of Eight (G8) nations should cancel all debt of poor countries and make HIV-AIDS a top security priority, experts and analysts said Wednesday ahead of a summit of the industrialised powers.

"We have to be clear: (HIV-AIDS) is a greater threat than terrorism. This year, three million people will die in Africa. These are preventable deaths," Salih Booker, director of Africa Action, told reporters.

Booker said G8 countries are the lead players in what is "most accurately described as global apartheid," enjoying economic benefits vastly out of proportion with their populations, while the world's poor see little economic progress.

At the June 7-10 summit in Sea Island, Georgia, "the AIDS pandemic should appear at the top of the agenda but it is likely only to get lip service," Booker added, noting that fewer than two percent of HIV sufferers in Africa have access to basic antiretroviral drug treatment.

He said debt cancellation has to be a major part of enabling poor countries to take resources now used for debt servicing to be used for crises from AIDS to civil strife.

Marie Clarke, director of the Jubilee USA Network said that the groups salute British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown for seeking to put debt on the agenda.

But she said extending a program for highly indebted poor countries (HIPC) would not bear fruit. "We need real action, not just rhetoric," Clarke said, urging 100 percent debt relief for the poorest countries.

"The global majority will not stand for lip service on their debt serice," she said.

"The extension of HIPC isn't a breakthrough," Booker argued, adding that countries taking part still are servicing debt and not using resources to address crisis conditions.

And for Njoke Njoroge Niehu, director of the 50 Years is Enough Network, an invitation extended to African leaders is just public relations. "We think their presence (in Sea Island) is really a fig leaf. They come there as guests, not as participants."

Clarke and Bill Fletcher, of United for Peace and Justice, and TransAfrica Forum, voiced dismay at what they called interference with civil liberties.

When the G8 meets, an alternative economic summit will be held in nearby, modest Brunswick, Georgia. They said that while protests including a march against the Iraq war were planned, a state of emergency has been declared in Georgia allowing the governor to revoke protest permits at any time, which Clarke said "creates a risky situation."

"You're seeing a subversion of democracy," Fletcher said, referring to a climate of perpetual fear since the September 11 attacks which he said the government has used to squash protests and curb civil liberties.

The Group of Eight is made up of Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the United States.