CAPE TOWN, South Africa, Dec 7 (AFP) - US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright arrived in Cape Town Thursday evening at the start of a tour of South Africa, Mauritius and Botswana.

She was due to pay a courtesy call Friday on retired Anglican archbishop Desmond Tutu, who won the Nobel Peace Prize for his struggle against apartheid, and to hold a breakfast roundtable with women leaders.

Later Friday, she is due to visit an HIV/AIDS research centre at a hospital in the Johannesburg township of Soweto, then go on to Pretoria for a meeting with President Thabo Mbeki, with whom she is due to hold a press conference at 6:30 pm (1630 GMT) Friday.

On Saturday she will have breakfast with Foreign Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma before flying on to the Indian Ocean island republic of Mauritius, going on from there to Gaborone Sunday evening.

This is Albright's fourth -- and last -- trip to Africa as secretary of state, but she visited the continent three times as US ambassador to the United Nations before being appointed secretary in 1997.

She is accompanied by Under Secretary of State for African Affairs Susan Rice, one of the principal architects of a renewed US interest in Africa over the past few years.

South Africa, Mauritius and Botswana were chosen for this trip because they are "three of the continent's most prominent success stories", and because "all have a strong bilateral relationship with the United States", said a senior State Department official accompanying the secretary.

"They are exemplary democracies and performing well economically," the official added.

The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, stressed that Washington wanted to encourage the three countries' economic efforts and regional integration, particularly within the framework of the 14-nation Southern African Development Community.

Albright will also visit an AIDS centre in Botswana, which has the world's highest incidence of HIV, with more than one in three adults infected.

SubSaharan Africa is home to 70 percent of the world's 36 million people living with HIV and AIDS, and measures to counter the pandemic have been a focal point of US aid to Africa in recent years.

In Pretoria, Albright will stress that "the United States has a tremendous interest in the success of South Africa's democratic transition" since the end of apartheid in 1994, the official said.

The United States gave South Africa 600 million dollars in development aid from 1994 to 1996, and has provided 45 to 60 million dollars a year since then.

Some 54 million dollars in bilateral aid to South Africa has been set aside in next year's budget, the official added.

After Africa, Albright will go on to Europe to take part in a NATO ministerial meeting in Brussels on December 14-15.

She will go on to visit at least one other European capital, but those details have not yet been announced.

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