We will now invite the Minister of Foreign Affairs of South Africa to address us.

FOREIGN FOREIGN MINISTER ZUMA: Good morning, everybody. We are obviously very delighted that the Secretary of State chose South Africa as one of the countries to visit in his first visit to Africa. We have had a very fruitful discussion, but contrary to what normally happens, we spent a lot of time discussing regional issues and continental issues, international issues, because our bilateral relations don�t need any mending -- they are very good. So those are on track and will continue that way. But we have indeed agreed that we will always touch base -- on particularly issues of common concern on the continent and otherwise. We had a long discussion on the MAP -- the Millennium recovery plan on Africa -- where that process is, and where we are going and what we would like to do with people that we have identified as partners in this recovery plan. The United States obviously is one of those partners that we are going to be relying on as we move along as we try to implement�because they, over the years, have showed interest in making sure that the continent eventually will take it�s rightful place. So we are hoping that as we move along we move together.

We also had discussions around issues like Sudan and so on. The racism conference that is coming up in August, we both have very similar concerns that the conference must be a success, and must produce a program that will be workable both at the national level but internationally and that the conference must indeed address the issues that are of concern to all of us. So we�ve really had a very good, as the President will be visiting on the 26^th of June. Which means we will have met almost three times in as many months.

Thank you very much. Over to you.

SECRETARY POWELL: Thank you Madam Minister for your warm welcome and I certainly agree with the assessment you just gave. We have had a very interesting, serious and productive discussion of this morning, as well as our conversation with President Mbeki last night. Our bilateral relations are on very solid footing and we have a common interest in solving regional conflicts that exist within the Continent and we also had very, I thought, helpful discussions with respect to the situation in the Middle East as well.

I think that my presence here this morning shows the interest that the Bush Administration has in Africa and I think the invitation that President Bush extended to President Mbeki to visit later next month also shows an interest. In the two months since the Minister visited in Washington we have spoken on the phone a number of times and we have continued to build a personal relationship that exists between the two of us and I think this is indicative of the closeness of the relationship between the United States and South Africa. We will continue to do everything we can to assist them in their development and especially in the development of the MAP as it moves forward. This is an African renaissance plan that is conceived by Mr. Mbeki and several other co-founding national leaders in Africa and an African plan that they will put together and then see how the rest of the world can assist them in moving forward on the agenda of the Millennium African Renaissance plan. So, it is a great pleasure to be with you and I look forward to an exciting day here in South Africa.

Question: Mr. Secretary, you recently announced (inaudible) additional $200 million dollars for the National assistance in the United States for AIDS-related diseases, but activists in the united (inaudible) estimate that the U.S. should be putting a great deal more (inaudible) given its size and given the size of the problems. The United Nations say that, for example, that one in five South Africans have HIV. Is the U.S. putting enough into AIDS? Foreign Minister may I ask you, from an outside perspective, given the numbers that the UN has called the relevant (inaudible) in South Africa the level of infection in South Africa sometimes it seems the South African Government doesn�t have the same sense of urgency about this disease as outsiders do. What is the South African point of view?

SECRETARY POWELL: On the first question, the $200 million dollars is on top of roughly $500 million dollars that is already programmed for the year. Over the last several years the United States has doubled its commitment to fighting this problem with our funds. I would like to see even more go to the struggle and in the future I think we will make the case to the Congress that it should continue to increase funding for HIV/AIDS work. There is also a great deal of money being spent by our Department of Health and Human Services, for the most part within the United States, looking for a cure through the National Institutes of Health, and undertake another number of research activities that ultimately will support the fight worldwide.

So HHS is also major player in this battle and that is why the President charged the Secretary of HHS, Tommy Thompson, and me to work together and we are working together. Activists would always want to see more and I encourage them to keep pressing us, we should try to do more. The aid is great and the $200 million additional dollars that the United States came up with from within existing budget accounts. It is just the seed money for a global trust fund and we expect other nations throughout the world to contribute to the trust fund and the United States will contribute more money to it in the future. It is not a one-time appropriation. It is a trust fund that will help the world and it will grow not only through government contributions, but with private contributions, business contributions -- average citizens contributing what they can to the solution to this problem.

So I think the United States can take credit for showing a leadership role in this battle and by giving much more than other country or any other group of countries towards this battle. But I would certainly not disagree with the proposition that it can, and ultimately must, do more.

FOREIGN MINISTER ZUMA: Thank you. I think from an outsider�s point of view, we agree with the Secretary of State in saying when it comes to South Africa I think first of all, I just want to correct that figure. The figure of one in five is for pregnant women and not everybody in South Africa is a pregnant woman. But having said that, even that is very serious. But I think it is very important for the outsider, in particular, to understand that in South Africa we are very concerned about the welfare of our people. We don�t think outsiders are more concerned than we are. We came into government only seven years ago and at that stage there was hardly anything done by the government about AIDS, even though they knew AIDS was there in the community. The AIDS budget was very small at the time. If you look at what we have done in that seven years just in AIDS alone, you would realize that we take this matter very seriously.

But I think the outside world is missing the point about AIDS, particularly those who think we are not doing enough, because they are basing their assessment only on anti-retroviral drugs--whether we are giving anti-retroviral drugs to our people. And in our view, it is a very small proportion of dealing with the AIDS epidemic and if we thought that that was the major aspect of dealing with the AIDS epidemic we would do it. But we don�t think so. We think dealing with the AIDS epidemic in South Africa and elsewhere, the major, major attention should still go to education. Young people must know about AIDS, they must know how to prevent themselves from getting the infection. That�s the major aspect.

The second aspect, in our view, is to make sure that people de-stigmatize and de-mystify AIDS. So that people begin to understand that AIDS is a disease that they can talk about, that they can be compassionate towards people who are living with AIDS and in that way even people who are living with AIDS would be much more helpful in the campaign. But if they are stigmatized they will always hide and therefore be unable to play a healthy role in dealing with HIV/AIDS.

But I think we must also understand that HIV/AIDS as an immune disease is very linked to poverty in the sense that your nutritional status, your well-being, plays a very critical role in how fast you deteriorate from just being HIV positive to having full-blown AIDS and dying. And therefore, if we do not improve the material conditions of our people and particularly those who have the infection, if we can�t improve their nutritional status�like all diseases, it�s not just unique to AIDS�whether you are talking about measles or something else, a child who is healthy, well-fed, you give them an infection of measles and you give another one who is mal-nourished, the mal-nourished one will probably die whereas the healthy one might not even need to go to hospital or to a doctor, might just have a transient fever, a few spots here and there and run around and be okay.

So, you have to look at this problem in a holistic view. Even when you come to drugs that are needed for treating people with AIDS, the most important drugs, in our view, are still not the anti-retroviral drugs but they are the drugs that treat the opportunistic infections to which most people, who are HIV, and are succumbing, whether it is TB, pneumonia, diarrheas or whatever those opportunistic infections are. Because if you haven�t got those drugs to treat those opportunistic infections then people will get an infection and die. So it is very important, and that�s why, we thought the outside world was very hypocritical when we were trying to bring a law to make access and affordability to those drugs that are life-saving even for people with HIV, were opposing us. And we did not get a lot of support initially from a lot of countries in fighting that battle, but I am glad to say that eventually we did get support and that battle was won. But it was precisely to deal with all those problems and you can�t, therefore, just zero in on anti-retroviral drugs and say this is what makes or breaks the HIV/AIDS campaign.

So we take it very seriously but we think in the long term it will help us to deal with it in a very holistic view and not to deal with it in a headline and in a headline view that South Africa now gives anti-retroviral drugs and everybody is happy. But we would know we really not doing a service to our people and to the campaign itself.

SECRETARY POWELL: May I just underscore a point that the Minister made with respect to prevention being, perhaps, the key to it all. Educating young people how to protect themselves -- that is how you will break the chain eventually. The second point I would like to make is her comment on taking the holistic view, especially the other diseases that may flow from the infection -- and usually are the killer diseases -- and that�s why the global trust fund is for HIV/AIDS and other communicable diseases such as measles, such as tuberculosis, malaria, any other kind of diseases that might take advantage of the infection.

Question: I assume that you discussed the matters in Zimbabwe. Could you tell us how South Africans see Zimbabwe and if you agree, Secretary, on any joint or commercial (inaudible) with the Zimbabwean government?

FOREIGN MINISTER ZUMA: Yes, we did discuss Zimbabwe in yesterday�s meeting and we outlined what our approach to Zimbabwe has been and what we are planning to do. We view the situation in Zimbabwe as a very critical situation, particularly the economic situation there. And we are very worried both as neighbors and as people who do a lot of training with Zimbabwe, but mainly as neighbors of Zimbabwe that we should continue to try to assist Zimbabwe�not to get deeper and deeper into this economic crises but to try and see how they can come out of it.

At the same time, we are very frank with the Zimbabweans about issues where we don�t agree and issues that we think are exacerbating the situation rather than helping it. We have a meeting planned to meet with the Zimbabweans very soon to discuss with them how we see the Zimbabwean situation and make suggestions to them on how we think we should work together to try and bring�we can�t bring a magic recovery but to just even stop it getting worse than what it is. And we are anticipating that if nothing is done soon by the Zimbabweans themselves, all of us can help but at the end of the day it is the Zimbabweans that have to really take the decisive steps in getting themselves out of a critical situation in which they are. We think if that does not happen soon the situation is going to deteriorate quite fast.

SECRETARY POWELL: I just might add that in that conversation we not only discussed the economic crisis but I concentrated on the political crisis caused to a large extent by the actions of President Mugabe. And the two things together are leading to a crisis in Zimbabwe that will spill over the borders in due course and affect South Africa. So from that standpoint I think I can share with you that both of us see the problem in the same way, in that action has to be taken both on the economic front and on the political front to stabilize the situation and to persuade Mr. Mugabe to move in a more democratic fashion toward a resolution of the problems within Zimbabwe.

Mr. Mamoepa: Thank you very much Madam Minister and Secretary of State.