"We must leave Dublin with an action plan to fight HIV/AIDS in our region," Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern, whose nation holds the rotating European Union presidency, said in an opening address to the two-day gathering.

"This Dublin conference must send out a clear message. HIV/AIDS is a potent threat to our young people."

Eastern Europe and Central Asia were seeing AIDS spread at the most rapid rate of anywhere in the world, the conference was told.

In 1998, only 30,000 people were infected in the two regions against 1.5 million now, according to a report by Peter Piot, executive director of UNAIDS, the United Nations body tackling the disease.

Piot further warned that the accession of 10 mainly eastern European states to the European Union on May 1 could risk seeing this swift advance in HIV infection moving further into Europe.

"In the Baltic states, one percent of the adult population is infected by HIV. Now, with the opening of the borders, I think this is everyone's business," he told AFP.

UNAIDS has called on EU governments to do more to help the mainly former Soviet bloc nations joining the community to tackle the spread of the virus.

"In the new EU, this should be one of the priorities," Piot told the BBC ahead of the conference.

"Fighting AIDS is something that benefits not only the population of the countries it is done in, but also their neighbours, because the viruses don't need a visa and don't respect borders.

"It is clear that expansion of the EU is not only about free markets and political union, but also about social aspects."

On May 1, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia will join the EU, along with Mediterranean island states Cyprus and Malta.

Such was the urgency of the situation that the EU should consider establishing a specialist agency to combat the spread of HIV in the bloc, Portuguese President Jorge Sampaio told delegates.

"The European Union, as it did in 1993 for drugs and drug addiction, should set up a specific agency to serve as a technical and political instrument capable of establishing consistent community policies in this regard," he said.

In a message to the gathering, United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan warned that 80 percent of those infected in Eastern Europe with the HIV virus, which causes AIDS, are young.

Ignoring this would be a "deadly mistake", he said.

"No nation can afford to see its future workers and leaders struck down by AIDS before they reach maturity."

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TERRA.WIRE