He was speaking in Livingstone, Zambia, on the eve of a conference on the pandemic in the Victoria Falls resort between UN agencies and southern African ministers.

As in Africa, Matsuura said, AIDS in South Asia was spreading primarily through "heterogeneous sex" between men and women, but South Asia had the advantage of stronger infrastructure in health services and education.

"In South Asia," he told AFP in an interview, "the trend is upward -- it is rising very rapidly.

"Some countries want to hide its extent," he said, but some South Asian leaders, such as those in Thailand, were making a concerted effort to stop the disease spreading.

In China, he added, there was a "new trend," with its leaders giving more priority to fighting AIDS.

"We have to protect young people," he said. "Education is crucial.

"The more education children have, the less likely they are to catch AIDS. We propose sex education for girls in particular."

The meeting in Livingstone, a regular six-monthly get-together of agencies involved in the UN AIDS body UNAIDS, which UNESCO is currently chairing, is usually held in New York or Europe, but switched this time at Zambia's invitation to focus on the "epicentre" of the disease in southern Africa.

At the end of 2003, the UN estimates, 26.6 million people in countries south of the Sahara desert were HIV-positive out of a world total of 65 million.

The Livingstone meeting on Thursday will see the UN agency heads meeting the ministers of health, finance and education from Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia, Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

South Africa was invited, Matsuura said, but the government responded that its ministers were "not available".

He singled out Brazil, Cambodia, Cuba, Senegal, Thailand and Uganda as countries which had made significant efforts to fight AIDS.

"National governments must play a key role," he said. "First we must raise the awareness of political leaders."

In Livingstone, Matsuura visited a school which includes AIDS orphans.

In January, he said, he visited Ghana with his wife Takako, and an AIDS victim there died holding his wife's hand -- "that was very shocking".

Livingstone, on the border with Zimbabwe, is a hot-spot for AIDS, as are most frontier towns in Africa, with cheap prostitutes servicing long-distance truck drivers who spread the disease everywhere they go.

Some 25 to 30 percent of Zambian adults are HIV-positive, according to UN estimates, with the rate in Livingstone at the high end.

The Lusaka government is just starting to provide antiretroviral drugs to sufferers. Most will have to pay, but the government says it will provide free drugs for the poorest 20 percent.

TERRA.WIRE