BELGIUM: EU Commission says release of Bulgarian nurses and Palestinian doctor opens way for normalisation of EU-Libya relationship

European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso welcomed on Tuesday (July 24) the release of five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor convicted of infecting Libyan children with HIV. The Bulgarian nurses were finally transferred to Sofia after the EU, which Bulgaria joined in January, agreed a deal with Libya on medical aid and political ties, officials said. Last week a Libyan judicial council commuted the death sentences against the six, convicted of deliberately infecting more than 400 children at a Benghazi hospital, to life imprisonment after the victims' families received a 460 million U.S. dollar settlement. Barroso said no extra money had been paid. "We have not increased our financial contribution, which we have negotiated with the Libyans for a long time," Barroso told journalists. Their return to Bulgaria after eight years in captivity ends what Libya's critics called a human rights scandal and lifts a barrier to attempts by the long-isolated north African state to complete a process of normalising ties with the outside world. "What I did yesterday, with President Gaddafi was to assure him about our political and global interest in normalising the relationship with Libya," Barroso said. "And then the Emir of Qatar also intervened, who in addition to his mediation, offered to give an additional humanitarian contribution to Libya," Barroso said. EU External Relations Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner travelled to Tripoli with Cecilia Sarkozy, the wife of the French president, to help free the medics and flew with them to Sofia. She signed a two-page deal with Libya, laying out how ties could be boosted, a European source said. The source said the deal would cover trade, support for archaeology, illegal immigration, grants for students and visa questions. A Libyan close to the negotiations said the EU also agreed to help upgrade a hospital in Benghazi, Libya's second city and the town where the infections first appeared in the 1990s. The six medics were accused of infecting 438 children with HIV-tainted blood eight years ago. However, they denied the charges and foreign scientists concluded the epidemic was probably a result of poor hygiene in the hospital in Libya's second-largest city.

ITN Source | July 24, 2007

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