U.S. Secretary of State to visit Africa this week

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, expected to leave office in just a month and a half, this week adds a trip to southern Africa and Europe to her four years of globe-trotting, the State Department announced on Monday.

Albright departs on Wednesday for South Africa on what may be her last official foreign trip in the post. She also will tout ideals of democratization, freedom of speech and peaceful transition during stops in Mauritius and Botswana, regarded as two of the continent's success stories.

State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said in a statement she would first visit Cape Town and Johannesburg on her fourth trip to sub-Saharan Africa as Secretary of State. She then goes to Mauritius, leaving for Botswana December 11.

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"This trip by the U.S. Secretary of State will once again underscore the Clinton Administration's unprecedented engagement on the African continent and will showcase these three countries' impressive commitment to democracy, economic progress and regional cooperation," the statement said.

In Europe, Albright is due to attend a gathering of the North Atlantic Council, comprised of NATO's 15 foreign ministers, which takes place in Brussels on December 14 and 15.

African success stories

Though Albright and her NATO allies were able to achieve some of their military goals in Yugoslavia last year, eventually taking control of Kosovo after a 78-day bombing campaign against the forces of Milosevic, the West's attempts to intervene in African conflicts have had unhappier endings.

The killings of 18 U.S. soldiers in a U.N. peacekeeping force in Somalia in 1993 soured the U.S. government on interventions in Africa. But Albright has argued for a U.S. role in African crises and backed logistical support for British forces in Sierra Leone's conflict this year.

President Bill Clinton pushed hard for passage through Congress of the African Growth and Opportunity Act, which granted sub-Saharan African countries that undertake economic reforms expanded duty-free access to U.S. markets.

He hailed South African President Thabo Mbeki as a leader of his continent in a bid to encourage the kind of peaceful transition by which he took power from Nelson Mandela.

Mauritius, a stunning Indian Ocean island, is important to the United States not so much for its beaches as for its role at the United Nations, where Washington backed it for a Security Council seat, keeping out Sudan.

The United States bombed a pharmaceutical plant in Khartoum in 1998 on grounds it had links to Saudi-born Islamist Osama bin Laden and that it was preparing to make chemical weapons.

In South Africa, Albright's theme will include HIV/AIDS and women's issues as she meets government officials, non-government organizations and members of civil society.

The Clinton administration sees AIDS as a threat to global security and is spending $225 million in foreign aid to fight its spread. That compares to $310 billion in defense spending.

In August 1998, Albright saw the aftermath of bombings of U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya, blamed on bin Laden.

On her first sub-Saharan trip as Secretary of State, she went to Ethiopia, Uganda, Rwanda, Democratic Republic of Congo, Angola, South Africa and Zimbabwe.

Last year she visited Guinea, Sierra Leone, Mali, Nigeria, Tanzania and Kenya, arming herself with arguments to fight isolationists who see few U.S. interests in the continent.

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