Mandela urges rich world to act against AIDS

World music stars rallied around anti-apartheid icon Nelson Mandela yesterday to help press the rich world to do more to fight the AIDS pandemic that has ravaged sub-Saharan Africa.

The 86-year-old former South African president is to host a star-studded concert under the midnight sun in Tromsoe, a small Norwegian city far north of the Arctic Circle, as part of his "46664" anti-AIDS campaign.

About 15,000 people will watch international and Norwegian musicians - including Annie Lennox, former Led Zeppelin frontman Robert Plant, Peter Gabriel and Zucchero - perform on a giant stage flanked by the sea and snow-capped mountains.

Mandela, who has looked frail in recent public engagements, made a brief appearance to greet the musicians on a surprisingly warm Arctic summer day.

Mandela started the "46664" campaign - named after his prison number during 27 years in jail under apartheid rule - in 2003 to raise funds to fight the disease.

"There is a genocide happening... and we need to get very upset about it," former Eurythmics lead singer and solo artist Lennox said.

"There is a tsunami happening in Africa every day and we don't realise it," she said, referring to the giant waves, triggered by an undersea earthquake that left more than 228,000 dead or missing in Southeast Asia in December last year.

Mandela is expected to urge the G8 group of industrialised nations to do more to fight AIDS in a speech at the concert and will warn the youth of the north, and especially the nearby Baltic states, about the threat of the pandemic.

Mandela retired from public life last year but remains one of the leading international voices on AIDS.

Activists praised him earlier this year for helping to end the stigma surrounding the disease by disclosing that his only surviving son, Makgatho, had died of an AIDS-related illness.

HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, has devastated communities in sub-Saharan Africa. About 25 million people are infected with the virus and millions more contract it each year.

In South Africa, the country with the largest number of cases, an estimated 5.3 million of the 45 million population, are infected with HIV, while up to 40 per cent of the population are infected in Botswana and Swaziland.

The disease is spreading fast elsewhere in the world. More than a million people are infected in Russia and the other former Soviet states, and an estimated five million people in India are HIV positive.