TRIPOLI, May 19 (AFP) - Bulgarian Foreign Minister Solomon Passy said on Wednesday he had asked Libyan authorities to find a quick and just solution in the case of five Bulgarian nurses condemned to death by a Libyan court.
The nurses and a Palestinian doctor were accused of deliberately injecting the HIV virus that can lead to AIDS into more than 400 children in a paediatric hospital in the northern Libyan city of Benghazi. Forty-three of the children have since died.
The six were sentenced on May 6 to death by firing squad after a trial that had lasted several years.
Passy stressed that a rapid answer was important in the case "which is no longer uniquely Bulgarian" but of great interest to the European Union. The death sentences have been condemned by both the EU and United States.
All six proclaim their innocence and are appealing to the Libyan supreme court.
Passy was speaking after talks with his Libyan counterpart Abdel Rahman Shalgham and Justice Minister Ali Omar Abu Bakr.
Shalgham told the press conference that "the affair of the Bulgarians is a legal matter."
"The justice minister has explained to the (Bulgarian) foreign minister all the legal aspects of this affair and we hope that the court will act on the appeal as quickly as possible," Shalgam said, adding that the case was now before the supreme court.
"The Bulgarian public is following these death sentences closely and the Libyan public is following the tragedy suffered by these children," Passy told reporters when he arrived at Tripoli airport.
"Both countries are suffering and the best solution is to talk," he added.
The trial of the nurses and doctor heard testimony from Luc Montaignier, the French scientist who isolated the HIV virus, that the outbreak was caused by poor hygiene and started before the nurses arrived at the hospital.
The nurses and doctor were also ordered to pay a total of one million dollars (827,000 euros) in compensation to the families of the victims.
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