Powell kicks off African tour

BAMAKO, Mali -- U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell has arrived in Mali to kick-start an African tour aimed at addressing AIDS and regional wars.

Powell has given Africa precedence on his travel schedule over Asia and Latin America -- challenging widespread assumptions that the world's poorest continent is not high on President George W. Bush's foreign policy agenda.

The six-day tour -- which began in West Africa on Wednesday -- will take him to South Africa, Kenya and Uganda.

Powell was met by Mali's foreign affairs minister, Modibo Sidibe, and is due to meet President Alpha Oumar Konare, the current chairman of an alliance of West African nations. They will discuss peacekeeping efforts in Sierra Leone.

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Powell is also expected to visit a medical centre that is jointly funded by the Mali government and the U.S. National Institutes of Health.

State Department officials told Reuters news agency Powell has two main objectives in his tour -- to find out first-hand about the epidemics of HIV/AIDS and other infectious diseases and hear African leaders talk about the regional wars ravaging the continent.

AIDS now affects some 25 million people in Africa, about 70 percent of the world total, and is now the primary cause of death on the continent. South Africa alone has 4.7 million AIDS sufferers, more than any other country in the world.

U.S. Acting Assistant Secretary of State Nancy Powell said in Washington on Tuesday that Colin Powell wanted to examine the nature of the AIDS threat, which he has called a national security problem.

"It's also a chance... to look at what both Africans and the U.S. government and other Americans are doing to combat the disease in Africa," she told a briefing.

Bush has pledged $200 million -- and more later -- for fighting AIDS and other diseases ravaging Africa.

The sum is part of an estimated $7-$10 billion-a-year fund that U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan hopes the world's richest nations and private philanthropists will establish to fight AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis.

Powell is steering clear of regional hotspots like Sierra Leone, Sudan, Angola and the Democratic Republic of Congo and mostly consulting African leaders who have a mediating role.

Konare is current chairman of ECOWAS (the Economic Community of West African States), which has played a leading role in trying to secure peace in a growing regional conflict involving Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea.

ECOWAS is pushing for a border force to be deployed between Guinea and Liberia, which was founded by freed American slaves and retains close cultural links to the United States but is under U.N. sanctions for backing Sierra Leonean rebels.

In South Africa, Powell will talk to President Thabo Mbeki about Congo and Zimbabwe, where gangs of militant supporters of President Robert Mugabe have wreaked havoc.

In Nairobi, Powell will listen to President Daniel arap Moi on the chronic civil war in southern Sudan between the Arab Muslim government and the black African southerners.