By DARLENE SUPERVILLE, Associated Press Writer

GABORONE, Botswana - President Bush (news - web sites) is learning firsthand how AIDS (news - web sites) is devastating Africa during a visit to this nation where nearly four of every 10 adults carry the virus — the highest infection rate in the world.

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Bush came to Botswana, near the southern tip of Africa, bearing a $15 billion plan to combat the disease, and he received a raucous welcome. Dozens of children waving small American and Botswanan flags danced and waved as he arrived here, and scantily clad men and women performed tribal dances.

Bush stood at the edge of the scene smiling and waving, then plunged into a crowd of hundreds of people, many jumping up and down, offering both hands for handshakes.

It was the third country on his five-nation tour of a continent battling hunger and suffering from civil unrest.

He spent Wednesday in South Africa, a country about twice the size of Texas that the United States views as a model of stability on the continent.

Botswana, too, is rich and diamonds and has a stable government. But it is facing a potential AIDS disaster.

Fourteen countries in Africa and the Caribbean account for nearly half of the world's HIV (news - web sites) infections, but Botswana is especially hard-hit. More than 38 percent of its adult population is infected with HIV. The life expectancy is 39.9 years for its citizens ages 15-49.

Botswana's President Festus Mogae has adopted Africa's most aggressive response to the disease, including a promise to provide AIDS medicines free of charge to all who need them. That program is funded in part by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (news - web sites).

The United States is jointly sponsoring 16 HIV testing centers, donating money to improve health care and helping fund AIDS awareness campaigns, including a serialized radio drama dealing with AIDS-related issues.

Botswana and the other 13 hard-hit countries would share in the billions of dollars available under Bush's global AIDS initiative, a likely topic of discussion when the two presidents meet privately in Gaborone, the capital. Mogae says AIDS and the stigma it creates threatens Botswana's future.

"All gains are being reversed by HIV/AIDS," he told The Associated Press.

White House spokesman Ari Fleischer (news - web sites) said Thursday that Botswana's AIDS infection rate has remained flat since 2001, despite the country's efforts to combat the disease.

"Botswana is trying to do the right thing, and we want to help them so they can do more," Fleischer told reporters on Air Force One as Bush flew here from South Africa.

Trade is another issue being promoted by Bush. He was touring exhibits at a trade hub created last year by the U.S. Agency for International Development.

A highlight of his day trip to Botswana will be an hour-long tour of the Mokolodi Nature Reserve, created in 1994 on donated land to promote wildlife conservation and environmental education for the country's children.

Occupying about 20 square miles of land just outside Gaborone, the reserve provides a home free of predators for elephant orphans and endangered rhinos, as well as zebra, giraffes, warthogs and steenboks. Guests can pet two resident cheetahs raised from infancy at the park.

Bush opened his first presidential tour of sub-Saharan Africa in Senegal on Tuesday. Next up are stops in Uganda on Friday and Nigeria on Saturday. He returns to the White House late Saturday.

The trip is giving Bush a close-up view of some of the continent's protracted crises, and he has been dogged by the question of whether to send U.S. peacekeepers to Liberia.

On Wednesday, Bush remained noncommittal about whether to send U.S. soldiers, but pledged that he will not allow American forces to become stretched too thinly around the globe. Bush said U.S. money has helped pay to train seven battalions of African peacekeepers. He said it was a "sensible policy" to help the Africans help themselves "so that we never do get overextended."

Bush has invited U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan (news - web sites) to the White House on Monday, along with the head of U.N. peacekeeping missions, a U.N. official in Washington said. Annan, of Ghana, has said in the past that he who would like to see the United States lead a multinational peacekeeping force in Liberia.

Bush also talked Wednesday about Sudan, where peace talks are to resume in July. A war broke out there in 1983 when rebels challenged the predominantly Arab and Muslim northern government in a bid to win greater autonomy for the largely Christian south. A cease-fire was extended last month. Former Sen. John Danforth was returning to the region in an effort to help end the war, Bush said.