By Vinnee Tong, AP Business Writer

NEW YORK (AP) -- Anti-tobacco activists said Friday that 160 countries that have signed a treaty to curb tobacco use were on the verge of adopting guidelines that say tobacco sellers' interests conflict with public health.

Representatives of the countries met this week in Durban, South Africa, to determine what role, if any, tobacco companies will take in the implementation of a treaty to prevent or slow tobacco consumption around the world. It was the third such meeting on enforcement of the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, organized under the World Health Organization.

A Boston-based corporate watchdog group said Friday that the countries had agreed in principle to how the guidelines would be worded and would vote on them Saturday.

Kathy Mulvey, policy director at Corporate Accountability International, said that earlier opposition from China and Japan -- which both have a stake in tobacco companies -- had dissolved. The section of the treaty in question says, in part, that countries should protect their public health policies from "commercial and other vested interests of the tobacco industry."

"They provide a roadmap for countries to resist interference by Big Tobacco," Mulvey said after the meeting wrapped up on Friday.

Mulvey said the treaty's Article 5.3 establishes that there is "a fundamental conflict of interest between the tobacco industry's interest and public health." Tobacco sellers shouldn't be considered a stakeholder in terms of public health and shouldn't be making legislative proposals on public health, Mulvey said.

"I think the expertise of companies like ours is important, and we should have a role to play in regulatory issues," Philip Morris International Inc. spokesman Mike Pfeil said. He suggested the industry could be particularly helpful in areas such as stopping illicit trade, on fiscal policy and product regulation.

In the U.S., Congress may consider a bill next year that gives the U.S. Food and Drug Administration the authority to regulate the tobacco industry. No other government agency has had such sweeping oversight. Altria Group Inc., which until March owned Philip Morris International, has been a leading supporter of the FDA bill.

The global tobacco prevention treaty is designed to reduce the harm associated with tobacco use. The Bush administration has signed it but did not sent it to Congress for ratification, which is required for full participation. Corporate Accountability International spokeswoman Sara Joseph said President-elect Barack Obama had urged the Bush administration to send it to the Senate for a vote in 2005.

Activists said tobacco prevention efforts abroad were being stymied by interference from state-owned tobacco companies in Japan and China as well as the major public companies that sell cigarettes around the world. Philip Morris International, the largest non-governmental cigarette maker in the world, has a partnership with the state-owned China National Tobacco Corp.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has been a prominent supporter of tobacco prevention. And his efforts got a boost in July, when Bill Gates pledged additional financial support. Together they have given $375 million to a global effort to cut smoking, $250 million from Bloomberg Philanthropies and $125 million from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

The money will be used on efforts to raise tobacco taxes, help smokers quit, ban tobacco advertising and protect nonsmokers from exposure to smoke. It will also aid efforts to track tobacco use and better understand tobacco control strategies.

At the time of the announcement, Gates said Africa was an area of particular interest.

"The epidemic in Africa is not well advanced, and that means that we can catch it at an early stage," he said at an event in New York.

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