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More cartoon trouble
06/05/2006 10:16 - (SA)
Sofia - Libya summoned the Bulgarian ambassador in Tripoli to explain the publication of cartoons of its leader, Muammar Gaddafi, and five imprisoned Bulgarian nurses, the foreign ministry in Sofia said on Friday.
The Bulgarian government said the Libyan foreign office had "expressed concern" over the caricatures, published on May 3 in the Bulgarian daily Novinar.
Tripoli has claimed the cartoons "discredit Libyan justice" and described them as "an insult to the Libyan people".
One pictured the Libyan leader playing chess with the nurses and pieces shaped like oil barrels. Another showed Gaddafi disguised as a devil cooking a red soup of nurses' hats, and a third showed him writing a letter to thank Bulgaria for "quiet diplomacy" in front of a picture of a hangman's gallows.
The newspaper said it wanted to make Gaddafi "realise the monstrous absurdity of the trial" of five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor sentenced to death by firing squad in May 2004.
They were convicted of "knowingly" injecting at least 426 children with HIV-contaminated blood at a children's hospital in the northern Libyan town of Benghazi.
The five nurses and doctor have always maintained their innocence and in December, Libya's supreme court quashed the death sentences due to "procedural flaws" and ordered a retrial for May 11.
Bulgarian President Georgy Parvanov and his government have already distanced themselves from the cartoons, and said they hope the "isolated incident" would not affect relations between the two countries.
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