>[President Mwai Kibaki of Kenya thanked the Secretary-General for his visit and made a brief opening statement before inviting the Secretary-General to speak.]

SG: Thank you very much, Mr. President. Let me first thank you and the government and the people of Kenya for receiving us so warmly. It's always a pleasure to come to Kenya.

The President and I have had very exhaustive discussions. As he has indicated, we had the chance to discuss the progress in the peace processes of Sudan and Somalia.

I also had the chance to thank the President for the efforts his government has made to push the two processes forward and to thank him for the negotiating team he put in place to shepherd the process forward. Minister Musyoka, General Sumbeiywo and Mr. Kipligat, who are working on the two processes and are working extremely well with our team.

I think as neighbor to these two countries, he is perhaps much more aware than most of the impact the conflict and the fighting in the two countries has had on his own society. And on behalf of the UN, once again, I want to thank you for your own contribution.

But of course, we also realize that the situation in Darfur has to be dealt with quickly, otherwise Sudan cannot talk in terms of comprehensive peace, even though the North-South discussions have gone extremely well. And as the President said, we're on the verge of concluding that.

We also spoke about the challenge of HIV/AIDS and the need for all of us to become engaged to fight this epidemic which on this continent is really taking away the future of many societies and many communities. And I think most of you saw the report from the UNAIDS, the annual report indicating that we still today have 38 million people infected and 25 million in Africa alone. And it's spreading fast, in Asia, in Eastern Europe and the Caribbean.

And of course when you look at these gross statistics it doesn't tell the full story, the story of the orphaned children, the story of the infected children, the story of children who are heads of family at the age of ten or twelve because there's no one else available, the story of the women –today, AIDS has a woman's face in Africa. Women are much more affected than men, and we really, really need to tackle this epidemic. And it is not the responsibility of the President alone. Obviously, he has to lead the fight. Each and every one of us must take on the challenge.

I also had the opportunity to inform the President how the international community had welcomed his government reform agenda that they came into government with, the issue of good governance, transparency the President and his team have talked about. And of course we also touched on the constitutional process, and I hope all of them will go ahead smoothly in an open and transparent manner, and Kenya will set an example for the rest of Africa as it has done in the past.

Thank you, Mr. President.

[The President asked if there were any questions.]

SG: We'll take your questions if there are any.

[There were none.]