KIGALI - Cindy McCain, the wife of Republican US presidential candidate John McCain, and Mike Huckabee, who stood against McCain in the Republican primaries, are among the bipartisan group that will visit Rwanda this week.

According to media sources, the group will be in the country to see how US investments have helped some of the world’s poorest people and what steps the next president can take to fight global poverty.

When contacted on phone for details, the Secretary General in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Amandin Rugira, was reluctant to give details of the bipartisan visit in the country.

Available reports indicate that McCain and Huckbee will be accompanied by Senate majority leaders Tom Daschle who will be representing Presidential Candidate Barack Obama, and Bill Frist who will lead the delegation for the ONE campaign, an organisation that uses grass-root efforts to pressure world leaders to address poverty and preventable diseases.

The two men, Daschle and Frist, have for the past year co-chaired the ONE campaign.

According to the ONE campaign website, the delegation will have on it John Podesta who was Chief of Staff to President Clinton and heads the Center for American Progress, and Leon Panetta, who formerly served as White House Chief of Staff to President Clinton. He was also in the House of Representatives and worked as House Budget Committee Chairman.

Former member of the House of Representatives who worked as House Budget Committee Chairman, John Kasich, is also part of the team.

In a statement posted on the website, the American people have made an incredible difference in the lives of millions of people struggling to survive extreme, brutal poverty and the next American President has the opportunity to finish the job – to finally erase preventable diseases from the planet and eliminate the kind of suffocating poverty which claims thousands of lives everyday.

The statement also indicates that during the bipartisan visit to Rwanda, the delegation will visit places where the United States President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) is providing funds to save lives at risk from HIV/AIDS.

"It will be an eye-opening trip, and one that we hope pays off with stronger policy commitments to the issues we care so much about – ending poverty and disease — from the two leading presidential candidates,” the statement reads in part.

The team is also scheduled to visit schools and orphanages in Rwanda and also hear from farmers about their efforts to grow more crops and address the food crisis by growing their way out of it.

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