Czechs, Qatar paid into HIV children fund - Libya

The Czech Republic, Slovakia, Qatar and Bulgaria contributed to an international fund to treat hundreds of children who contracted HIV at a Libyan hospital and support their families, Libya said yesterday.

"I thank Qatar for its role in the nurses' case. European countries including Bulgaria and the Czech Republic contributed to the fund for the infected children," Libyan Prime Minister al-Baghdadi Ali Al-Mahmoudi told reporters in Tripoli.

The Benghazi International Fund has already given $1 million to each of the families of the infected child under a deal that enabled death sentences to be commuted on six foreign medics convicted on charges of deliberately contaminating the children.

The payout was financed by a $460 million loan to the fund made by an official Libyan development institution that is due to be repaid as and when donors make resources available. In a subsequent deal, the European Union promised closer ties with Libya in exchange for custody of the medics.

Libya's al-Mahmoudi said the fund had already received that amount, allowing it to pay for assistance to the families and what he called "repair of the damage".

Bulgaria said it contributed to the fund through a Bulgarian non-governmental organisation in which private Bulgarian and foreign companies took part, but that the sums given so far were symbolic compared to what was paid to the families.

Jailed since 1999, the six medics were twice condemned to death after trials that drew sharp international condemnation. The medical workers said they were innocent and that earlier confessions of guilt were extracted from them using torture.

After Bulgaria released them, victims' families back in Libya condemned what they called Bulgaria's "recklessness" and demanded the medical workers be re-arrested by Interpol. Libya then weighed in, saying the pardon had violated earlier accords with Bulgaria. Yesterday it said it had called on Arab League countries to review ties with Bulgaria.

"Yes, we submitted a memorandum to the Arab League and we demanded a review of the Arab position with regard to Bulgaria," Libyan Foreign Minister Mohammed Abdel-Rahman Shalgam said.

The league's members are due to meet tomorrow. Bulgarian officials insisted the pardon was legal and urged Libya to understand that the resolution to the nurses crisis was in everyone's interest.

"The most important thing is to restore our relations with Libya because in the last eight years they have stalled in the medics' case," Bulgarian Foreign Minister Ivailo Kalfin told Darik radio earlier yesterday.