GENEVA, Dec 5 (AFP) - The wife of the Rwandan president, Jeannette Kagame, held talks here on Wednesday with UNAIDS to garner firm support for an African anti-AIDS initiative involving 18 'first ladies' from the region.

"We feel that we are a group which on its own can play a big role because we are all aware that we've got a big audience and we could even talk for those who don't have the voice," Kagame told reporters.

The group was set up after a conference in Kigali, Rwanda, in May on children and HIV/AIDS prevention which identified strategies that need to be put in place for a concerted and coordinated fight against the epidemic.

Though not as badly hit by HIV/AIDS as neighbouring Uganda and Tanzania, Rwanda has been one of the most affected countries by the disease, UNAIDS Executive Director Peter Piot told a joint news conference.

"The political will is there but that we knew already before this visit ... the issue is now really how to translate the various plans, how to translate the various strategies into a large-scale operation," Piot said.

Sexual violence and rape during the 1994 genocide in Rwanda was a major way of spreading HIV across the country, he said. Before that the disease had been limited to cities.

"Among the weapons used during the genocide was also rape. As if rape was not enough they would make sure that infected people are raping these women," Kagame said.

Some 11 percent of the population was found to be infected with HIV/AIDS in Rwanda, or about 400,000 people, according to a 1997 study, but Kagame said the figure was thought to be about double that.

Up to 800,000 minority Tutsis and politically moderate Hutus were slaughtered by Hutu extremists in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda.

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