( dpa ) - US President George W Bush is to arrive in Africa on Saturday on a five-nation trip designed to highlight his administration's effort to combat HIV/AIDS and malaria on the continent.
Bush's visits to Benin, Tanzania, Rwanda, Ghana and Liberia come as he urged Congress to approve his plan to double the fight against HIV/AIDS to a 30-billion-dollar effort and provide treatment to the millions of Africans afflicted with the disease.
Bush, who will be accompanied by wife Laura, will be making his second trip to the continent and first since 2003, when he launched a five-year, 15-billion dollar programme to fight AIDS and malaria in Africa. The largest government-sponsored programme ever to fight the diseases, Bush says the effort has brought treatment to 1.4 million people.
"The president will stress the importance of supporting his commitment to combating HIV/AIDS, malaria and other infectious diseases," Bush's national security adviser, Stephen Hadley, said in a briefing with reporters ahead of the trip.
Bush will become the first sitting American president to visit the memorial in Rwanda dedicated to victims of the 1995 genocide, a visit that comes as the international community steps up efforts to end the political violence in Kenya that has killed more than 1,000 people. The top US diplomat for the region, Jendayi Frazer, has referred to the violence as "ethnic cleansing."
Hadley said Bush plans to urge the African nations to help end the political stalemate arising from Kenya's disputed December 27 presidential elections in that have been the source of the violence, especially when he visits neighbouring Tanzania.
Hadley called for a halt to the violence followed by international humanitarian aid. He urged Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki and his defeated opponent in the election, to work out a power sharing agreement followed by "free and fair elections."
The Bush administration has helped wind down wars in countries like Liberia, Sierra Leone, Angola, Burundi and brokered a powersharing peace agreement that ended the North-South conflict in Sudan that lasted 20 years and claimed more than 2 million lives.
But a second conflict erupted in Sudan's Darfur five years ago and the fighting continues, coupled with the violence in Kenya, which had been over decades among Africa's most stable countries.
"What's happening in Kenya is a step backwards," Hadley said.
Washington has sought to pressure Kenyan political and businesses leaders by warning those suspected of inciting violence that they will not be granted visas to the United States. It has already sent letters to 13 political and business leaders that they could be barred from travelling to the United States.
Bush will meet with UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon before departing on Friday to discuss the UN effort to deploy a peacekeeping force to Darfur to bolster an ineffective African Union mission. Bush has been frustrated by the slow pace of deploying the UN force, partly because of footdragging by the Sudanese government to allow the deployment.
Hadley said he does not expect Bush's trip to yield any breakthrough in halting the Darfur violence but said there has been progress.
"What we're seeing there is progress. It is very slow progress," Hadley said. "I think the president would say it is too slow progress."