Retired archbishop Desmond Tutu has been appointed to a commission launched by the UN yesterday to develop a strategy for fighting HIV/Aids that gets more mileage out of every dollar spent.

The special commission Tutu is joining, organised by the Joint UN Programme on HIV/Aids, will identify new ways of reducing HIV infections.

A scientific advisory panel will this year gather information on research and best practices for preventing HIV, put it into digestible form and present it to the commission for consideration.

The commission should ''transform society'' and ''produce a new movement'', Michel Sadibe, UNAids' executive director, said at a news conference at the International Aids Conference, being held in Vienna.

The commission includes Tutu, Francoise Barre-Sinoussi, who helped identify HIV, former French president Jacques Chirac, and Mohammed el-Baradei, former executive director of the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Laurie Garrett, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, New York, will chair the scientific panel.