NAIROBI, Dec 1 (AFP) - Authorities in Kenya stepped up the fight against AIDS on Friday, the day dedicated across the world to combatting a the syndrome which affects two million people in this country.

Dozens of Nairobi residents, for the most part men, queued outside a free HIV testing and counseling centre set up outside the city's international conference centre.

"This is the first time that I have been tested," said one man who asked not to be named.

Many others crowded around various stalls set up by voluntary organisations or by associations of people living with the HIV virus.

Here they learnt how to put on a condom correctly and about the best diet to follow to stay healthy in the event of infection.

Tee-shirts, caps and stickers with the slogan "Men can make a difference in the fight against AIDS" were distributed in great numbers to hundreds of schoolchildren and street kids.

AIDS barely entered public debate in Kenya until last year, when President Daniel arap Moi decared it a national catastrophe. On Friday, the government announced a 200 million dollar five-year plan to deal with the crisis.

The plan focusses on prevention, education, access to health care and support for the families of the affected.

"This is a war. We must win," Moi said in a statement published in the run-up to World AIDS Day.

According to the United Nations, 13 percent of adult Kenyans are HIV positive. One of the main aims of the new plan is to reduce this figure.

Another is to cut infections through blood transfusions by blanket screening of blood donations and to reduce the level of mother-to-child infections.

According to UN figures, 1.5 million Kenyans have died of AIDS since the epidemic began in the early 1980s. Local press reports have questioned these figures, however, comparing the UN's annual average AIDS deaths figure of 180,000 to the the official total of all deaths in the country in 1997: about 190,000.

When children return to public schools in January, they will for the first time have an AIDS course on their syllabus.

"In terms of prevention, we are only talking about avoiding sexual contact, not how to protect oneself in the case of such contact," said an official in the Kenyan Institute of Education.

The issue of condoms is a controversial one in Kenya, where, thanks to a plethora of evangelical and other churches, the use of such prophylactics remains widely condemned.

In making his "national catastrophe" speech last year, Moi spoke out against promoting condoms as a method of containing the AIDS pandemic.

"True love can wait," read banners flown by demonstrators on Friday morning.

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