BULGARIA. BULGARIA WILL NOT PAY COMPENSATION FOR NURSES' FREEDOM, FOREIGN MINISTER

Bulgaria's Foreign Minister Ivaylo Kalfin said that his country would not directly donate money to the international fund for supporting Libya's fight against AIDS.
Five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor were sentenced to death in Libya in May 2004 for allegedly infecting 426 Libyan children with AIDS-tainted blood at a hospital in the northern town of Benghazi.
On December 25, Libya's Supreme Court reversed the lower court ruling and ordered a retrial of the six, who had already spent seven years in a Libyan prison.
"Bulgaria will not participate with any resources like compensation... because the Bulgarian nurses are not guilty," Kalfin told a press conference. "Like other European countries, we will train medical workers and supply aid for the treatment of the infected children."