18.4.2007

Bush Presses Qaddafi to Release Death-Sentenced Bulgarians

US President George Bush has called on Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi to bring to a favourable end the trial of the five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor, imprisoned in the African country on trumped-up charges of purposely infecting more than 400 children with HIV.

A letter to this effect will be handed to the Libyan leader by US Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte, who arrived in Tripoli late on Tuesday in the framework of his African trip, Libya Today newspaper reported on its website.

The letter makes it clear to Qaddafi that truly normal diplomatic and political relations with the United States will be possible only after the HIV trial is brought to an end and the Bulgarian medics are released.

The US has long backed Bulgaria, saying the medics, jailed since 1999, are innocent. During the time of their arrest, Qaddafi's decisions to renounce nuclear weapons and compensate victims of Libya's bombing of a jet plane over Lockerbie, Scotland, led to the reopening of diplomatic relations with the United States.

In the letter Bush stressed on the need Tripoli authorities to pay full compensation to the families of Lockerbie victims.

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