"None of the wicked will understand, but those who are wise will understand."
Daniel 12:10

 In the 1/1/04 Frontiers in Bioscience article titled "The history of SIVs and AIDS: epidemiology, phylogeny and biology of isolates from naturally SIV infected non-human primates (NHP) in Africa," Apetreietal. (Preston Marx is senior author) state:

AIDS AS A ZOONOSIS? CONFUSION OVER THE ORIGIN OF THE VIRUS AND THE ORIGIN OF THE EPIDEMICS

Based on results showing the simian origin of HIV, AIDS was postulated as a zoonosis. This hypothesis was based on data showing cross-species transmission, such as: 
(i) similarities in viral genome organization;
(ii) phylogenetic relatedness; 
(iii) prevalence in the natural host;
(iv) geographic coincidence and
(v) plausible routes of transmission.

Both SIVsm/HIV-2 and SIVcpz/HIV-1 fulfill these criteria, however, although the hypothesis of simian origin of AIDS is nowadays largely acknowledged, the idea that AIDS is a zoonosis has never been proven and must be questioned.
The strict definition of a zoonosis is "a disease of animals that may be transmitted to man under natural conditions (e.g., brucellosis, rabies)" or "a disease communicated from one kind of animal to another or to a human being; usually restricted to diseases transmitted naturally to man from animals" [Medical Dictionary Online, http://cancerweb.ncl.ac.uk/cgi-bin/omd]. Interestingly, in the Dictionary of Virology it is emphasized that the term zoonosis is frequently misused: "a zoonosis is a disease or an infection naturally transmitted between vertebrate animals and humans. However, the term has been frequently misunderstood".

All these definitions show that the use of this term is questionable in the case of the emergence of AIDS pandemic. Several arguments are provided to support this objection:

1. In spite of the large exposure to SIV-infected monkeys in Central and West Africa, extensive molecular epidemiologic studies documented only 10 cross-species transmission events during the last century. Only four of these cross-over events resulted in epidemic strains: HIV-1 group M, the major group of viruses of the pandemic, group O, which is responsible for perhaps 5% of cases in Cameroon and groups A and B of HIV-2, which are the epidemic forms of HIV-2.