Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi said yesterday he will urge Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi later this month to free five Bulgarian nurses sentenced to death for infecting hundreds of Libyan children with HIV.
The nurses were condemned with a Palestinian doctor to death in December - the second time in the eight-year case - for deliberately starting an outbreak in a Benghazi hospital that infected over 430 children, more than 50 of whom have died.
Bulgaria and its allies the US and the EU, which it joined on January 1, have denounced the verdicts, saying they ignored key evidence, and have raised pressure on the oil-rich north African country to let the medics go.
Profs. Prodi said he would personally raise the issue with Mr Gaddafi at a January 27 meeting of the African Union, saying, "I consider this my personal problem.".
"We will use all instruments we believe are necessary and helpful to achieve the aim of bringing the nurses back to Bulgaria," he said.
"It will be an international commitment not only from the side of Italy but also from European countries... Bulgaria's EU entry will help."
Sofia and its allies say the verdicts ignore testimony that the medics were tortured to confess and studies from international Aids experts showing the epidemic started before they began working at the hospital in 1998.
Today, EU lawmakers are expected to vote on a resolution urging the Union and its member states to consider revising its engagement policy with Libya unless it frees them.
Libya has demanded €10 million in compensation for each child, so-called blood money that would allow the families of the victims to waive the death sentences.
Bulgaria has refused, saying any payment would be a false admission of guilt, but with the EU, it is trying to negotiate a release through diplomatic means.
Meanwhile Bulgaria's top European Union official said yesterday the release of the five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor facing the death penalty in Libya is non-negotiable,.
EU Consumer Affairs Commissioner Meglena Kuneva was reacting to reports that Libya had offered to quash the death sentences in exchange for financial compensation and the release of a Libyan jailed in Scotland for the 1988 Lockerbie bombing.
"The freedom of the Bulgarian nurses and the doctor is non-negotiable," Ms Kuneva said in an interview.
"This has nothing to do with the Lockerbie case. There isn't the slightest proof that these people are guilty and the EU will not allow any other case to be used as a leverage. It is intolerable."
She also called on individual countries to reconsider any bilateral agreements they may have with Tripoli. The EU and the US have been pressing Libya daily to release the medics and say the nurses are being used as scapegoats to deflect blame from a more likely culprit - Libya's medical system.