LONDON -- Nelson Mandela and Princess Diana marked World AIDS Day on Thursday by pleading for compassion and more research money to combat the scourge that has touched every corner of the globe.


From Malawi to Romania, children were mourned as the innocent victims of AIDS. From Iran to China, governments issued grim warnings about the disease ravaging their peoples.


Three million people have died from AIDS and up to 14 million are infected with HIV, the virus that leads to the disease, according to World Health Organization figures.


At a 42-nation AIDS conference in Paris, UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali called for an intense global push to fight the virus in poor countries, declaring: "I am issuing a general call to arms.


"AIDS is throwing the planet's social inequalities into relief by exacerbating them. Every day AIDS kills children, destroys families, drains economies, threatens communities. We must act without delay."


Princess Diana, one of the most prominent AIDS campaigners, marked the day by opening a new research and treatment center in London that will be the largest in Europe, serving 60,000 people a year.


Diana, patron of Britain's National AIDS Trust, helped to break people's "leper-like" fear of AIDS victims when she shook hands with an HIV-positive man in a London AIDS ward in 1987.


"The picture went round the world. She laid to rest a few stereotypes," said an AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome) campaigner at the Terence Higgins Trust, a British AIDS charity.


In Johannesburg, South African President Nelson Mandela also sought to break down the barriers, saying in a special message: "We need to treat relatives, friends and other compatriots who are infected with compassion."


He said the government would allocate resources to combat the epidemic.


In Malawi, which in 1991 had the highest AIDS rate in the world, more than 4,000 people die every month and leading campaigner Dr. George Liamba said it was vital to prevent infection in the younger generation before it was too late.


In Romania, more than 90 percent of cases are children. Doctors believe the source in the Romanian Black Sea port of Constanta was blood sold by sailors which was sent to the places of greatest need -- hospitals and orphanages.


No country can afford to ignore the deadly scourge that recognizes no frontiers.


China said its tiny number of AIDS cases could quadruple in the next decade through HIV contamination of its largely unscreened blood supply.


A UN agency forecast an AIDS explosion in relatively unscathed Vietnam, with 15,000 deaths expected by 1998.


Around the world, campaigners rallied to highlight the message -- prevention is the best cure, ignorance can kill.


In the Ivory Coast capital Abidjan, about 2,000 youths rallied wearing T-shirts proclaiming the slogan: "AIDS is death, condoms are life."


In Rome, two Green Party deputies distributed free condoms to their colleagues in parliament.


In Brussels, the famous Mannekin Pis statue of a small boy urinating was swathed in a condom costume.


On a Thai phone-in program, a couple with AIDS told listeners life did not have to end after contracting HIV.


Perhaps one of the most tragic voices to speak out was British missionary Joy Bath, 44, a virgin who believes she caught AIDS by cutting her toe while working in a Zimbabwe hospital with many patients suffering from the disease.


Doctors do not expect her to live past Christmas but Bath, now going blind, said: "I knew the risks. I'd do it again."