JOHANNESBURG, Sept 19 (AFP) - The spread of AIDS is the greatest threat to life in Africa and will kill more people on the continent than a terrorist attack on any scale, the US ambassador to the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) said Wednesday.

Recalling the September 11 suicide plane bombings in the United States, George McGovern told journalists: "As bad as that tragedy is, and it was certainly terrible, AIDS is a much greater threat to the lives of the people on this continent."

"It's really a form of terrorism that will destroy more lives than have been destroyed in any attack of the kind that just took place in the United States."

McGovern, who has just completed a fact-finding mission to Ethiopia, Senegal and South Africa, also labelled the pandemic the greatest threat to food security in Africa.

"AIDS is the greatest threat to food security, and the biggest problem facing this continent. It's like a runaway freight train ripping across the continent, killing people on all sides."

He said the inverse relation between the spread of HIV and food production was illustrated by the death of seven million agricultural workers worldwide of AIDS in the past 15 years.

He told reporters food production in Africa was already suffering and the FAO believed it would have to give additional help to Angola, Ethiopia and Zimbabwe.

South Africa is the country with the highest HIV rate in the world, with 4.7 million people infected at the end of last year, according to government figures.

According to the country's Medical Research Council, AIDS has become the country's biggest killer, causing 40 percent of the deaths of those aged between 15 and 49 last year.

Sub-Saharan Africa has been the worst hit region of the world, with 25.3 million people there infected with HIV -- 70 percent of the 36.1 million cases globally, according to UNAIDS figures from 2000.

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