EU aide, French first lady in Libya for HIV medics

BRUSSELS, July 23 (Reuters) A top European Commission official and France's first lady have travelled to Libya to seek the release of six foreign medics convicted of infecting Libyan children with HIV.

The European Union's executive said in a statement yesterday that EU External Relations Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner and President Nicolas Sarkozy's wife Cecilia went to the North African state yesterday ''as part of efforts for the release of the (five) Bulgarian nurses and the Palestinian doctor''.

''The European Commission hopes that this situation, which is so painful and has lasted so long, can be resolved in a humane spirit,'' the statement said. It gave no further details.

Libya's Higher Judicial Council last week commuted death sentences on the six, accused of deliberately infecting 460 children at Benghazi hospital, to life imprisonment. That opened the way for them to return to their home country under a 1984 prisoner exchange agreement.

Bulgaria and its allies in the 27-member bloc say the nurses are innocent but have provided long-term medical assistance to victims and aid for the Benghazi hospital.

Families of the HIV victims received payments of hundreds of millions of dollars last week from a compensation fund set up by the Gaddafi Foundation. Once they are sent to Bulgaria, the medics could be pardoned by the new EU member state's president.

The Commission and France said the visit by Ferrero-Waldner, who has been negotiating on behalf of the bloc, and Cecilia Sarkozy, who visited the nurses and Libyan leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi this month, was agreed in a telephone call between Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso and Sarkozy.

''It was in this connection that Madame Cecilia Sarkozy, accompanied by Madame Benita Ferrero-Waldner, the European Commissioner for External Relations, and Mr Claude Gueant, the General Secretary of the Elysee, went to Libya this morning,'' Sarkozy's spokesman David Martinon said in a statement.

HOMECOMING? In Bulgaria, where a big poster saying ''We are waiting for you'' was placed at the Sofia airport's arrival hall, government officials rejected French media reports that the nurses could be flown back to the Balkan country as early as today.

''It is not true. The rumour is wrong. It is not clear when the nurses will come back,'' Deputy Foreign Minister Feim Chaushev told Reuters.

Some EU officials had voiced private exasperation at what they saw as the new French leader seeking credit for the release of the medics at the last minute after Brussels has spent three years patiently negotiating with Tripoli.

Sarkozy himself is due to visit Libya on Wednesday.

Emmanuel Altit, one of three French lawyers representing the Bulgarian nurses, welcomed the visit.

''These are useful discussions and we hope a great deal will come from these discussions,'' Altit said.

''All efforts are welcome and we welcome with interest anything that contributes to a solution. We hope it will be able to speed up a solution,'' he told Reuters in Paris.

Last Friday, the European Union held out the prospect of a quick boost to relations with Libya if the fate of the six jailed medics is resolved in a satisfactory way.

''If this process ends where we want it to end, then a reinforcement of relations with Libya is very much a possibility, and something that is going to happen,'' a senior EU Portuguese EU presidency diplomat said.

He said the EU would look to raise its relations with Libya to the same level of cooperation as with other North African states, covering trade, economic assistance, migration, cultural and political relations.

Reuters SKB VP1345