SOFIA, Dec 23 (AFP) - Bulgaria and Libya will set up a special fund for AIDS-infected children in Libya, where five Bulgarian nurses face the death penalty after being convicted of causing the infections, the foreign ministry said Friday.
The announcement came two days before the five, along with a Palestinian doctor, are to appear before Libya's supreme court to appeal their convictions for "knowingly" transfusing AIDS-contaminated blood into more than 400 children at a Benghazi hospital.
The fund was agreed on in talks Wednesday and Thursday in Tripoli which also included representatives of the European Union, the United States and Britain, the Bulgarian ministry said in a statement.
All parties to the talks agreed to set up the fund, whose size has not been specified, to aid the families of the 426 victims, some 50 of whom have died.
The measure is "part of the international effort to find an outcome acceptable to all sides of the situation that followed the tragic spread of HIV/AIDS in Benghazi," the statement said.
"The fund will seek, collect and coordinate the distribution of financial and material aid to the Benghazi families," it added.
In Tripoli, a senior executive of a charitable fund headed by Seif el-Islam Kadhafi, son of Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi, said: "The deal covers three areas -- financing treatment of Libyan children suffering from AIDS, improving and equipping the specialist hospital in Benghazi and help to the families of victims."
Asked by AFP about the intended sources of donations in the fund, Bulgarian foreign ministry spokesperson Dimitar Tsanchev said that "the fund will seek to raise money from both governmental and international non-governmental organisations".
He refrained from commenting on whether the setting up of the fund might have any impact on the fate of the nurses.
The five Bulgarian nurses and the doctor, who have spent almost seven years in a Libyan prison, are appealing their May 2004 death sentences with the aid of Western medical experts who say the six were scapegoats for poor hygiene at the hospital.
The appeal is to be heard Sunday.
Speaking to the BGNES newsagency, the coordinator of the Bulgarian defence Trayan Markovski, also said he did not expect that the news will influence the Tripoli Supreme Court.
"Formally speaking, if the process is independent of any outside goings on, there should be absolutely no connection whatsoever" between the fund and the trial, Markovski said.
"The opposite would mean that the court is not an instrument of justice but is used as a way to twist arms in order to obtain certain profit," he said.
The families of the infected children have long pressed for Bulgaria to pay them compensation.
But Sofia has rejected the idea of "buying freedom" for the nurses, saying that this would amount to recognising guilt.
The creation of the fund could be a compromise solution.
Bulgarian President Georgy Parvanov was quoted Friday in the newspaper 24 hours as saying that Bulgaria would have to pay "a very high price" to win the release of the nurses.
He did not elaborate on what kind of "price" he meant.
"There is light at the end of the tunnel," he said, adding, "I sincerely hope that this would be their last Christmas in Libya."
Sofia has recently encouraged moves to improve relations with Tripoli, which has suggested the death sentences could be lifted if Bulgaria provided humanitarian aid and medical care for the HIV-infected children.
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