Talks on medics 'very tough'
2007-07-23 15:08
Marcoussis - French President Nicolas Sarkozy said on Monday that talks on securing the release of six foreign medics, jailed for life for infecting hundreds of Libyan children with HIV, were "very tough".
Sarkozy, whose wife Cecilia was in Tripoli with the European Union envoy working to win their release, said: "What I know is that it's very tough. This has been going on for eight and a half years."
Speaking as he headed into a lunch with the French rugby team, Sarkozy refused to confirm reports that he might travel to Libya himself to try to drive the negotiations forward.
The president, who was accompanied by his top foreign affairs advisor Jean-David Levitte, afterwards told the rugby team that he had arrived late due to having "quite a few negotiations on the boil."
Aids medics' sentences commuted
The five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor were convicted in May 2004 of deliberately infecting 438 children with HIV-tainted blood at a hospital in the Mediterranean Libyan city of Benghazi.
The country's highest judicial body last week commuted their death sentences to life in prison.
On Monday, Libya laid out its conditions for their release in talks involving EU external relations commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner, Cecilia Sarkozy and French presidential aide Claude Gueant.
These included "the complete normalisation of relations between Libya and the European Union" and a repeated request that the EU provide treatment for the infected Libyan children, according to a diplomat.