were displayed in her store window.

Mrs. Diana Antonition, manager of The Body Shop (Bermuda) Ltd. in the Washington Mall, said she had two three-by-four-feet posters about AIDS up before the Christmas holiday.

The posters, which were provided by the San Francisco AIDS Association, were part of a major US AIDS-awareness campaign.

Carrying the slogan "protect and respect'', they show that people from all walks of life can be infected with the deadly disease and they advocate public support for those with the AIDS virus.

After hearing favourable comments about the posters, Mrs. Antonition said she asked the San Francisco AIDS Association to send some of the posters and other literature to Bermuda.

But days after the posters were displayed, the store's landlords -- Washington Properties -- told The Body Shop management they were breaching a clause in the lease.

The lease states that the tenant is "not to affix or set up on the demised premises or any part of the building or allow to be set up or affix thereon any advertisements, certain signboards fascia, advertisements, placards or sky signs of any description.

"Provided always that the lessee shall have the right to exhibit the trading name and the type of business of the lessee in a form approved by the lessor on the premises hereby demised and on the notice boards in the building to be arranged by the lessor''.

Mrs. Antonition said while management agreed that Washington Properties was right about forbidding advertisements that promoted an event or a particular organisation, she said: "Those posters were not promoting any particular group or any particular function. They were part of an educational campaign.'' And she added that while a few people found them offensive, more people congratulated the store for taking a stand on an important issue and for trying to inform the public.

She noted that the shop does a lot of campaigning for various causes, including Amnesty International, Earth Day, and the fight against animal testing.

"We need to sit down with the landlord when it gets quiet (sometime in the New Year) and work out a way to get around that (the clause in the lease),'' Mrs. Antonition said.

For now, she said the store will lend the posters to Agape House, the Education Department, or any other individuals or groups interested in using them.

When contacted yesterday, a spokeswoman for Washington Properties, who asked not to be named, pointed out that the mall has more than 40 shops.

"If everybody did that (put up educational posters) you could imagine what it would look like,'' she said.

She also noted that Washington Properties allowed several interest groups, including most recently STAR, to set up information tables and to hand out literature in the mall.

"We allowed STAR to distribute literature about AIDS because we feel that this is for the good of the community,'' she said, adding that Washington Properties was willing to meet with The Body Shop management on the matter sometime next month.