Bush writes Gaddafi, backs US-Libya ties - Jana

TRIPOLI, July 10 (Reuters) US President George W Bush has written Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi saying Washington wants to strengthen ties with Libya, Libyan news agency Jana reported.

The news agency said Bush's homeland security adviser, Frances Townsend, handed Gaddafi the letter when she met him in Tripoli late yesterday.

''We have achieved a great deal since we restored relations between the United States and Libya. I believe both our peoples have benefited from the development of these relations,'' Jana quoted Bush as saying in the letter.

Jana said: ''President Bush affirmed in his letter the willingness of the United States to develop and reinforce its relations with Libya.'' The United States resumed diplomatic relations with Libya, which had been severed for 24 years, in June 2004 after Libya announced the previous December it was abandoning its weapons of mass destruction programmes.

In May 2006, Washington announced it would restore full diplomatic ties with Tripoli.

But the case of six foreign medics condemned to death in Libya on charges they infected hundreds of children with the virus that causes AIDS is a hurdle to deepening Libyan ties with the European Union and the United States.

Both Brussels and Washington have urged Tripoli to free the medics, five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor, who say they are innocent and were tortured into confessing.

Libya's Supreme Court is expected to issue its ruling on the medics' appeal tomorrow.

Jana did not say if Bush's letter raised the medics' case.

In Washington, a senior State Department official said yesterday that if Libya's Supreme Court ruled against the medics, he hoped the case would quickly be referred to the country's High Judicial Council, which has the power to commute sentence or issue a pardon.

REUTERS AM ND1540