Briefing to the Press on the Secretary's Upcoming Trip to Africa

We are going to do this in two parts for you. We are going to begin with some on-the-record remarks by Acting Assistant Secretary for African Affairs Nancy Powell. When those remarks are completed, we'll then be able to give you a senior State Department official to answer any questions that you might have about the African component of the Secretary's upcoming trip.

So with that, I would like to turn it over to Nancy Powell, who will have a short statement to make about this upcoming travel.

ACTING ASSISTANT SECRETARY POWELL: Thank you very much. Good afternoon. Welcome. Let me talk very briefly about what the Secretary's objectives are for the trip, and a little bit about the itinerary.

The Secretary's trip has a number of objectives, including primarily to illustrate the engagement of this Administration and the Secretary personally in Africa and Africa policy. It's going to be an opportunity to engage a number of key leaders. He will be speaking with President Konare in Mali, President Mbeki in South Africa, President Moi in Kenya, and President Museveni in Uganda.

This will follow on his already having met here in Washington with Presidents Kagame, Kabila, and Obasanjo. So we have a wide variety of African leaders that he has met and begun to engage with.

We are also going to be looking at this trip for the Secretary to have an opportunity to assess some of the changes that are occurring in Africa, particularly looking at both the positive and the negative. But on the positive side, looking at countries where there are transitions in democracy going on, peaceful elections, and also increasing regional cooperation. Various stops meet those criteria in different ways.

It's also a chance -- and this is one of the key goals -- to examine firsthand the nature of the threat posed by the HIV-AIDS virus and other infectious diseases, as well as to look at what both Africans and the U.S. Government and other Americans are doing to combat the disease in Africa.

As you know, the Secretary is a co-chair with Secretary Thompson from HHS of the Cabinet Task Force on HIV-AIDS. He'll also be talking about our new initiatives and looking at programs that we've already been engaged in.

He'll also be looking at the opportunities following on yesterday's Rose Garden ceremony of how the AGOA (African Growth and Opportunity Act) implementation is going in Africa, talking with countries that are in various stages of working through the process. South Africa and Kenya are both in the final stages of qualifying on the transshipment for textiles; others are catching up.

He'll also be looking at U.S. continuing efforts to engage on conflict resolution in Africa. With President Konare in Mali as the president of ECOWAS (Economic Community of West African States), he is going to be particularly focusing on the Sierra Leone-Liberia-Guinea situation; in South Africa, talking to President Mbeki about the situation in Zimbabwe and also the Congo situation. In Eastern Africa, he'll be looking at the Sudan and also the Congo situation.

If I can go through just very briefly on the schedule, he will be leaving Tuesday night, heading first for Mali, spending Wednesday in Mali. Thursday is a travel day to South Africa, spending Friday in South Africa. Saturday will be partially a travel day on the way to Kenya, and then spending part of the day Saturday, part of the day Sunday, in Kenya, going on to Uganda, and then leaving for Europe on Monday morning.