GENEVA (AP) _ Namibian President Sam Nujoma told a U.N. conference Thursday that the AIDS epidemic was caused by nations trying to create biological weapons.

``HIV/AIDS kills the cream of any nation,'' the southwest African leader told the annual conference of the International Labor Organization. ``It is a man-made disease. It isn't a natural disease.''

Most scientists believe there is overwhelming evidence that AIDS originated in chimpanzees in Africa and then spread to humans, but some people, mainly Africans, have always denied that AIDS originated in that continent.

In a news conference after his speech Nujoma repeatedly declined to say which countries were responsible, but that ``the reality is that it is known that HIV started not in Africa.''

``It started by those states that produced biological warfare,'' Nujoma said. ``We have become victims like everybody else.''

``We blame nobody except ourselves _ humankind _ because we are selfish,'' he said.

Many Africans see the scientific community's assertion that AIDS originated in Africa as a Western plot against the continent. Infections there have grown rapidly. The virus was identified first in the United States in 1980s, but now an estimated 23 million Africans are HIV positive, the majority of the people in the world infected with the virus.

South African President Thabo Mbeki has also come under fire in recent months after speaking with a scientist who believes that the HIV virus does not cause AIDS.

An ILO report released Tuesday said the spread of the AIDS virus is likely to curb the size and quality of the labor force, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, increasing employers' costs and reversing economic progress.

``In the worst affected countries, AIDS is single-handedly wiping out decades of investment in education and human resource development,'' Peter Piot, head of the U.N. AIDS program, told the conference.

In some countries, more teachers were dying than were graduating from training colleges, he added.

Mercy Elizabeth Makhalemele, an HIV-positive mother from South Africa and founder of the National Women's Alive AIDS network, told the meeting that people living with the disease had many skills to offer their communities if given the chance.

``Working isn't about what we have. Working is about knowledge and working is about ability, and if a person has these two things I don't know why they should be deprived of that,'' she said.