Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, March 30, 1990                   TAG: 9003300806
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A/2   EDITION: EVENING 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium

BUSH AIDS SPEECH PRAISED/ ACTIVISTS WANT PRESIDENT TO MATCH WORDS WITH ACTION

"Compassion is important, but we need money," said Tim McFeeley of the Human Rights Campaign Fund.

In a speech Thursday to the National Leadership Coalition on AIDS, Bush called on Congress to pass the Americans with Disabilities Act to bar discrimination against people with AIDS and those who are infected with the human immunodeficiency virus, or HIV, which causes AIDS.

He also touted his administration's proposed fiscal 1991 budget proposal for spending $3.5 billion on AIDS treatment, research and education.

But Jean McGuire, executive director of the AIDS Action Council, said "the sensitivity we're seeing could mask the inaction we've had for the last decade" under former President Reagan.

"If today is the beginning and not an end to the president's efforts, we can be hopeful," she said. "But a decade of neglect requires a more aggressive and substantive and meaningful leadership than we heard today."

Leaders of the National Commission on AIDS were more positive in their reaction to the president's first major speech on the disease, which has taken the lives of more than 70,000 Americans, most of them homosexuals or intravenous drug abusers. They called Bush's attention an important first step in escalating the public battle against the epidemic.

Dr. June Osborn, the commission's chairwoman, said that even though the president offered no new initiatives, it was important that he showed concern about the issue and compassion for people with AIDS.

"In terms of changing the public mood, we desperately need that rhetoric," she said.