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DURING the past week, momentum grew to create a global fund to combat AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis and other infectious diseases in developing countries. U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, an ardent proponent, hopes to raise $7 billion to $10 billion a year from governments, corporations, businesses and individuals -- at least seven times more than is now spent fighting AIDS in Africa.

 The World Bank estimates that such a well-funded effort could rescue 6 million people a year from a premature death. The Bush administration supported the idea at World Bank meetings last weekend, but has since suggested it may make only a modest contribution -- perhaps $200 million, officials told the Wall Street Journal.

That's not enough. The devastation of developing countries by AIDS is one of the most serious threats to global order, and a crucial moral challenge to rich nations. Some 70 percent of the 36 million people infected with AIDS now live in Africa; if nothing is done, nations such as South Africa, Zimbabwe and Zambia face a devastating wave of tens of millions of deaths in the coming years. The epidemic could wipe out a significant part of the continent's most productive people, and destabilize societies for generations. 

The vast majority of African AIDS patients have neither access to drugs nor the funds to pay for them; the West has both. After years of dithering, rich nations have been challenged to make a decision at a U.N. conference in June: Will they commit funds to save those millions whose lives could be prolonged, or allow them to die?

A number of drug companies recently have agreed to lower prices for AIDS drugs in Africa. One major company, Novartis, also agreed this past week to sell a new remedy for malaria to the World Health Organization at cost. Private foundations have promised money, and Mr. Annan himself pledged $100,000 to the cause. 

What is needed now is active leadership, rather than grudging acquiescence, from the United States. The Bush administration says it recognizes the seriousness of the AIDS crisis, but proposes to raise spending for foreign AIDS assistance only 10 percent this year, to $480 million. 

Even if the reported $200 million contribution to the global fund now under consideration were added to that amount, it would still fall well short of where the United States should be. 

The Senate recently voted to double the administration's request for foreign AIDS spending, to $1 billion; at the least, the White House should endorse that change and commit the additional resources to the global fund.