Bulgaria hopes for quick Libyan deal

Bulgaria said it hoped Libya would finalise a deal to free six foreign medics convicted of infecting hundreds of Libyan children with HIV, a move that would boost Tripoli's relations with the West.

Libya lifted death sentences against the medics last week but is now asking for normalised ties with the EU and is holding out for more foreign funds to treat the children before it allows the foreigners to go home, diplomats said.

The EU insists the five Bulgarian nurses and Palestinian doctor are innocent and has been loath to pay compensation that could be interpreted as an admission of their guilt.

Last week a Libyan judicial council commuted the death sentences against the six accused of deliberately infecting more than 400 children at Benghazi hospital to life imprisonment after the victims' families received a $460 million settlement. That opened the way for the nurses to return home under a 1984 prisoner exchange agreement. Once in Bulgaria, they could be pardoned by the country's president, Georgi Parvanov.

"We are at the stage now where the decision is purely political,"Bulgarian Foreign Minister Ivailo Kalfin told reporters arriving for a meeting in Brussels.

"I hope there will be enough will from the Libyans' side today in order to finalise talks... If they show this will, then the transfer can be done very quickly."

Libya emerged from decades of isolation in 2003 when it scrapped a programme of prohibited weapons and returned to international mainstream politics.

The country has begun opening its big energy reserves to foreign oil firms and the US said this month it was sending its first ambassador to Tripoli in 35 years, but there could be a heavy diplomatic cost if the medics are not freed.