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Aids medics deal 'held up'
22/06/2007 10:55 - (SA)
Tripoli - Lack of agreement on compensation is holding up a deal in the case of six foreign medics sentenced to death in Libya for infecting children with the Aids virus, the childrens' families said on Friday.
"Despite difficult negotiations, a compromise was found on the different points of the deal, including the childrens' care and treatment, but there is still one sticking point concerning the compensation," they said in a statement.
The declaration comes after EU External Relations Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner on Thursday played down reports of an imminent deal in the case of the five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor.
An official with the Gaddafi Foundation, a charity headed by the son of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, had suggested that an out-of-court settlement could be reached as early as Friday.
Libyan sources had said a simultaneous announcement could be made on Friday in Tripoli and Brussels, where EU leaders are gathered for a summit meeting.
The nurses and Palestinian doctor, who recently obtained Bulgarian citizenship, were arrested in 1999 accused of infecting 438 children with HIV-tainted blood at a hospital in the Mediterranean city of Benghazi.
They were sentenced to death in May 2004.
The six have denied the charges and foreign health experts have said the epidemic in Libya's second city was probably the result of poor hygiene.
If there was a deal, their death sentences could be commuted and any new sentence served out in Bulgaria, as Libya and Bulgaria have an extradition agreement.
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